DOCUMENTING PROGRAM IMPACT WITH CHALLENGING AUDIENCES: EXAMPLES OF USING AUDIENCE RESPONSE TECHNOLOGY
Teaching & Educational Technologies
Michele Bakacs
County Agent II/ Associate Professor
Rutgers Cooperative Extension
North Brunswick
Abstract
Utilizing audience response technology (ART) with a PowerPoint platform has been shown to successfully engage extension audiences such as farmers, 4-H youth, and Master Gardeners. Often Extension educators encounter other types of challenging audiences where traditional approaches through written surveys and audience participation do not work for documenting program impact. This presentation will describe two programs where ART was an integral part of successfully documenting program impact with challenging audiences. One program involved working with Spanish speaking, low literacy residents about safe gardening techniques in urban environments. The second program involved working with veterans to teach green infrastructure practices for stormwater management. Both of these audiences presented a series of challenges in documenting knowledge gained and program success. Both language barriers and different literacy levels proved to be a problem for Spanish speaking gardeners in reading questions and writing answers to surveys even when assistance was given from bilingual volunteers. Within the veteran community, feelings of survey overload, perceptions of program surveys as test taking, and test anxiety prevented successful documentation of program impact. Utilizing ART devices helped to better engage audience members, reduced resources and the number of volunteers needed to administer program surveys, eliminated the need for written responses, and helped program participants feel confident in their anonymity when answering questions. Examples of methods of utilizing this technology with both audiences will be reviewed.
Authors: Bakacs, M. , Rowe, A.
-
Bakacs, M. Environmental Resource Management Agent, Rutgers Cooperative Extension, New Jersey, 08902
-
Rowe, A. Environmental Resource Management Agent, Rutgers Cooperative Extension- Essex and Union Counties, New Jersey, 07068