National eXtension Initiative

As part of the eXtension Military Families project it is one of our goals to create a Community of Practice (CoP) centered on the subject of network literacy. This community has a special focus on using social media to assist military families, but that is not its sole purpose. It has a broad Community of Interest (CoI) that includes anyone using networked technologies for commerce, social networking, and learning. It is not solely about using the tools of the networked economy (computer literacy), but also emcompasses how these technologies are impacting and reshaping society.

If you’re interested in working in this new community, please join the Network Literacy community at https://www.extension.org/people/communities/325. We will be organizing a meeting of interested parties over the next month. We’re looking for interested individuals to step-up to provide leadership and direction to help make this effort a reality.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Kevin Gamble
kevin.gamble@extension.org

As Extension professionals, we know that conversation and relationship building within our communities of practice and our communities of interest is the key to all that we do. Sharing, storytelling, asking questions, and providing answers is our core mission.

But what are the best solutions for doing that?

That is a key question that Sue Hawkins, Project Coordinator for the Sustainable Ag Energy Community of Practice is asking of her colleagues on the Content Management Board and of the eXtension Staff. Where does she go to do that? Where’s the best place to share information and build community among the coordinators and leaders of our Communities of Practice. And it’s a question, that John McQueen, of the eOrganic Community of Practice and Karen Jeannette, of the Consumer Horticulture Community of Practice, have been asking too.

Help us crowd-source that answer. What do you think? What are the best tools, the best solutions, and the best strategies for sharing? What can the eXtension Initiative staff do to facilitate that sharing? What do our Communities of Practice need to do? What can we all do in Extension to make this better?

Would Get Satisfaction work as a forum? Is the CoP Network at Wet Paint the best place? What about Facebook? or Twitter? Would creating a community and a mailing list at people.extension.org work best?

Are there others? Weigh in with your thoughts in the comments. Or head over to Get Satisfaction or Wet Paint – or start a new discussion in another tool (and let everyone know in the comments where that is).

If you are interested in forming a community of practice for eXtension the process is really straight forward and easy to do. The eXtension Community of Practice Handbook contains a reference sheet on forming a community of practice. This reference sheet walks you through a step by step process of forming a community.

The community of practice application and process can be completed and submitted at anytime a community has the documentation completed. Each application is reviewed by a review panel within 30 days of receiving the application. For more information about forming communities of practice or the application process contact Dr. Craig H. Wood, craig.wood@extension.org or call 859.323.8472.

An article in Science Daily states that, Establishing Trust Online Is Critical For Online Communication there conclusions were reported in a paper “Swift Trust in Virtual Teams”.

The authors, Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Naomi Rotter, argue that virtual team leaders and on-line teachers need to overcome the potential coldness of the electronic medium and suggest a number of tactics for building “Swift Trust” including:

1. Creating the sense that the leader is present even though they can’t be seen.
2. Establishing on-line dialogue early and quickly.
3. Swiftly and constructively replying to all new users comments and issues.
4. Recognising that the impression gained by users in the first week will have a major influence on future use.
5. Using private emails rather than public forums to scold users who are struggling.
6. These are useful techniques for virtual coaches and virtual team leaders seeking to create more effective virtually networked teams.

As a CoP members you can now participate in a monthly Web conferences that is hosted by the Content team for eXtension. These Web conferences will be informal and you can join when your schedule permits. These are not required conferences but just a mechanism to share information, provide a discussion forum, answer questions, provide training (like maybe the Wiki tip of the month!), share products being developed by CoPs, etc.

The monthly web conferences will be every third Tuesday of the month at 2 PM (Eastern), 1 PM (Central), 12 PM (Mountain), and 11 AM (Pacific) and are scheduled for one hour. The first Web conference will be on May 16th. We will be posting information about the Web conferences on the About eXtension blog (http://about.extension.org) as well.

Monthly audio calls with all of the core leadership of the 8 pioneer communities of practice are established starting May 15th. The calls will be an hour in length and will be on the third Monday of every month beginning on May 15th. Time will be 2 PM (Eastern), 1 PM (Central), 12 PM (Mountain), and 11 AM (Pacific).
The number for every audio call is 402.472.6290.

It is not imperative that each member of the core leadership team be on every call, but at least one leadership team member should be present. The calls are to facilitate conversations among the leadership, keep you abreast of activities happening with eXtension, share successes, problems or concerns, keep CoPs moving forward, and other items you feel need to be discussed.

This week the Equine CoP conducted an online chat about Condition Your Horse in the Summer. They found that their clientele are very eager to learn and discuss topics of their interest using online chat methods.

During the chat participants said they found out about the chat by email promotion through the Cooperative Extension System and from just browsing the Internet. The majority of those surveyed indicated a desire to have a chat either monthly or weekly and found the chat system to be easy or extremely easy to use.

These respondents also found the chat to be useful or extremely useful and provided feedback on future topics the Horse Team should cover. Online chats will be a great way a Community of Practice can directly interact with their Community of Interest.

The National Equine Resource Team, known as HorseQuest, joined together last week in Lexington, Kentucky to focus on developing content. This hands on meeting facilitated member involvement in the eXtension Communities of Practice Wiki where they further developed material for four educational learning modules. The team was excited to accept new members who hit the ground running and quickly found their place in this ongoing content development.

Discussion also focused on what characteristics should exist to engage in partnerships with groups both in and outside the Cooperative Extension System. Team members brought some really exciting opportunities to HorseQuest and eXtension that can soon be shared with other CoPs.

Despite the fast approaching deadline for launching their equine resources, they still found time and enthusiasm in discussing next steps and began dialogue on how a more robust youth component should be included and the specific audience to targeted.

Additional topics of discussion included peer review guidelines, protocol for adding and recruiting new members to the team, evaluation tactics, graduate and undergraduate student funding for specific tasks, migration of HorseQuest’s existing FAQs to the eXtension FAQ system and identified key members to participate in system testing.

A regular conference call schedule has been established to keep HorseQuest Team members in touch and engaged to take advantage of momentum stimulated during this meeting.

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.