National eXtension Initiative

Tennessee State University, overall winners of the first eXtension Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Challenge, held their considerable lead over other institutions representing the all Cooperative Extension Regions in phase II of the contest to become our undisputed National eXtension FAQ Champion. Tennessee State had an outstanding 59% of their Extension employees participating in the contest and also remains the winner of the 1890 Region. 

Congratulations also go to Extension employees of the University of Tennessee as the sole winner in the very strong Southern Region, submitting an amazing total of 561 FAQs by 34% of their employees. Honorable mentions also go to Louisiana State University (344 FAQs) and Texas A&M University (271 FAQs).

The University of Maine emerged victorious again for the North East Region with 41% of their Extension employees submitting a total of 91 FAQs while Montana State University also remained the clear winner in the Western Region with submission of 282 FAQs by 38% of their Extension employees.

The competition was close in the North Central Region however Purdue University remained in top position with 29% of employees submitting 314 FAQs with North Dakota State University finishing honorably with 28% of their Extension faculty and staff posting 230 total FAQs.

Team members of the winning intuition in each region who submitted FAQs will be awarded with an eXtension mouse pad. Overall, more than one thousand Extension employees registered in the eXtension FAQ system representing 54 institutions submitting a grand total of over 3000 FAQs. Submitted FAQs will be reviewed by appropriate Extension content specialists and Communities of Practice. Once the questions and responses are peer reviewed they will become part of the eXtension public FAQ system to be launched later this year. We greatly appreciate everyone’s participation.

Complete metrics on the eXtension FAQ Challenge can be viewed at: http://faq.extension.org/Metrics.html

eXtension will host the next national videoconference on Tuesday, February 28 from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m. ET. The videoconference will feature a variety of topics related to the February 1 Call for Engagement, an update on Phase II of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) initiative, an information technology update, and reports on communcations & marketing, fundraising & development, and eXtension training efforts.
Satellite coordinates for the videoconference are:

KU-band: AMC6, transponder K11, Freq 11920 (V)
C0band: AMC4, Ch. 17, Freq. 4040, (V)

An agenda for the videoconference will be announced prior to the event. The videoconference will also be available via webstreaming at: http://real.unl.edu/extension/

For more information about the February 28 videoconference contact Dan Cotton at dan.cotton@extension.org or 402-472-8841.

With the February 1 release of the second eXtension Call for Engagement comes the opportunity for the creation and development of new Communities of Practice.

With that in mind, eXtension is offering two workshops on the development of Communities of Practice on Monday, February 13, 2006 and Thursday, February 16, 2006. Each workshop will be 90 minutes in length.

The training will be offered using Breeze technology through Iowa State University on February 13 at 12:30 p.m. CST and on February 16 at 2:00 p.m. CST.

The training will be conducted by Craig Wood and Carla Craycraft, eXtension Associate Directors of Content.
Click here for more information on the Breeze technology and connection. You may also contact Craig, craig.wood@extension.org or Carla, carla.craycraft@extension.org, at the University of Kentucky, 236 Scovell Hall, Lexington, Kentucky, 40546-0064, telephone: 859.257.4736 x 495, fax: 859.323.1006.

Craig Wood and I recently visited with the Association of Extension Administrators (AEA) at their winter meeting in Houston, TX. Lorenza Lyons, Executive Administrator of AEA, invited us to give an eXtension update and to discuss how their community can better engage in eXtension. The presentation focused on eXtension mission, vision, values and guiding principles, and how Pioneering Communities of Practice (CoPs) are developing content using the eXtension collaborative workspace at http://CoP.extension.org.

Following the presentation, we discussed how they encourage their faculty to join CoPs, collaborate with other institutions to form new and important CoPs, and to name an iTeam (institutional team). In the evening, I attended their reception and enjoyed some terrific barbeque, “Texas-style”. The hospitality was great, the conversation constructive and we look forward to their engagement in eXtension.

Because content is at the heart of eXtension, bringing new Communities of Practice into the eXtension initiative is critical. Last week a new Call for Engagement was announced with an additional $500,000 available for new and existing Communities of Practice.

Specifically targeted in this call are communities that represent production agriculture, diet, nutrition, and health, and youth development. Proposals in other areas of Extension programming are also welcome.

As with the first Call for Engagement, proposals will go through a two-step review process. Pre-proposals are due to eXtension on March 24, 2006 and the final awards will be made on September 1, 2006.

For more information contact: Craig Wood, craig.wood@extension.org or Carla Craycraft,
carla.craycraft@extension.org, Associate Directors of Content, eXtension Initiative, University of Kentucky, 236 Scovell Hall, Lexington, Kentucky, 40546-0064, telephone: 859.257.4736 x 495, fax: 859.323.1006.

For some time now, the eXtension staff has been interested in moving away from our intranet site. We’ve heard complaints from our users and advisory groups that it was too complicated, too hard to navigate, contained much-too-much information that wasn’t relevent to the average user. So…here we are with about.eXtension.org…a new approach to news about the eXtension initiative.

This blog will be your introduction to eXtension and we’ll be updating this much more than we updated the old intranet site. For now you’ll come to this blog space via the old intranet.extension.org link…but eventually we’ll be replacing that with about.eXtension.org.

Please feel free to respond to our posts and let us know how you think we’re doing with the blog…it’s new to all of us.

Stay tuned!

Thought we might start a conversation on potential CoPs…

Let’s begin a dialogue or share areas in which people are complating creating communities of practice around. This will allow others to see what areas are being proposed and see if their skills and expertise could benefit a proposed CoP.

Welcome! If you are looking for information about the National eXtension Initiative, you have found the right place.