This year I held a Fruit Production series (February – April) focused on grafting. The series consisted of three events, the first a virtual seminar on the history of grafting and the various grafting techniques. The second event in the series was an in-person hands on grafting workshop. The morning was spent reviewing the types of grafting, and in the afternoon, everyone received a grafting kit, including 3 rootstock and 3 scions. Everyone got to graft at least one tree and then could take all their supplies home and graft the others. Many were so excited and sent us pictures of their newly grafted trees. The last event of the series was an in-person greenhouse and orchard tour, where they could see a large-scale grafting operation and tour an orchard more than 600 heritage fruit trees, three acres of unique small fruiting plants, and a high tunnel where the successfully grow figs year-round. These events were held in three consecutive months.

I started devising training series a few years ago, then stopped, and started again last year. Looking back at attendance numbers, the training series are typically better attended than just standalone training. I may not be able to coordinate a series on all topics, but I am going to put more effort into trying to if it is possible.

I think I’m fortunate in that I understand a large portion of my audience well and understand what motivates them because I still remember what it was like my first years of farming and not knowing what I didn’t know, which veterans do not like…we like to know what we are doing and what is expected. Veterans also like to be in person and like to get their hands dirty. The military offered us a lot of classroom training and formal educational experiences, but most of our military training was hands-on.

In my virtual seminars, which last 1-2 hours, I want to make better use of the poll and break out sessions in zoom. I need to think through what I want to come from those questions and break out session to ensure they are productive. A couple of years ago, we incorporated videos into our virtual session, when demonstrating hands-on activities; participants like this as they received the videos in a follow up email and could reference them. Videos are time consuming, but worth it. In my in-person events, I want to continue to incorporate hands on activates whenever reasonable.

For the courses that I am updating and getting ready to create, I hope to incorporate a brief 1-2 day in person segment either before or soon after the online portion begins. I plan to shift from hosting office hours during the course and using zoom meeting the way that zoom meetings are being used in the PDLC. I also want to use some of the zoom meetings to have farmers work together on an aspect of their work. I want to include more discussion forums and require them to post replies like in the PDLC. For the courses that require a written product at the end, my assistant instructor or I need to hold a meeting with each farmer to go over some basics about their farm business. This may seem time consuming, but after doing a few of these, I am pretty sure it will save time in the end and avoid the phone calls and emails it takes to finally figure out what someone is doing. I have learned that when you ask them to answer a few questions, you really do not get the big picture as to what they are doing on their farm, and it’s hard to help them develop a business plan or marketing plan and assess it if we do not understand what they are doing. I am going to continue to keep the student numbers to 12-15 for the in-depth courses where plans are due at the end to ensure everyone gets the attention they need. When having them work on a plan of some type, I want to provide them with a template and require them to use it. If they want to use something different after the course, that is fine, but having something standardized will help the instructors provide the best support and it will assist students when they have to work together on an aspect of their plan.

"What could you do to better understand your audience to motivate their learning?"

As the Climate Stewards Outreach Coordinator, I support delivery of the Cornell Climate Stewards program (via Extension educators) to program participants (NYS volunteers). The audience for this program is primarily the volunteers, but of course the educators are invaluable, especially with program implementation. I recently began this role, and have yet to meet all of the educators or any of the volunteers. A clear next step is to reach out to the group of volunteers (there are over 100!) to introduce myself and actively solicit feedback from them to learn about their experiences in the program. I also intend on setting up recurring virtual "office hours" where educators and volunteers can drop in and chat with me without the pressures of being in a group setting. I would be very excited to hear about why the educators/volunteers are involved with the program, what they enjoy about it, and what improvements they think could be made - I think with that information I would be able to make the program even better and further motivate their (and future participants') learning.

"What learning strategies might you add to your programs and activities to help your learners to be engaged, learn, and want to come back?"

To help keep learners engaged and wanting to come back, I think it will be important to create as much space for active learning and discussion as possible, in a variety of forms and settings. Discussions can take place during formal learning experiences (breaking off into groups for smaller discussions, asking questions and polling audience members throughout learning experience) or in less formal ways, such as a forum like this or having time for office hours. Creating opportunities for sharing ideas, through group activities or collaborative problem solving will help participants feel more connected with other participants too. Providing as much real-world relevance will help keep participants engaged and content more meaningful, through examples or guest speakers. I think it's important to bring programming to different places as well, not always meeting in the same location and offering convenience for individuals.

Having only been an employee at CCE for five months now and coming from a production role at my former employer, it’s been a while since I have led a formal educational experience. My most recent teaching experiences have, admittedly, not been that engaging. PowerPoint presentations to a seated audience. I did have a great experience, however, tabling at an elementary school with a “build your own food system” game on a cork board. The kids could place different elements of the food system in different spots along the supply chain challenging them to think what order things would go. I could have tried to explain this to them in a “sage on the stage” format, but letting the kids engage in the decision-making process with me as a guide to let them know why that might not work sparked genuine interest in the subject material.

Thinking farther back, I worked under a mentor at an environmental nonprofit delivering workshops on composting, waste reduction, and energy efficiency. My mentor, Aric, came from a drama background so he was great at adding a performative element to any of our presentations. Usually lighthearted and silly, this approach got everyone laughing and eased any tension in the room. Seeing us make fools of ourselves to some degree helped people open up more themselves and be willing to engage in the presentation. I felt like our workshops were the best when we could have a dialogue with our audience, asking them questions and applying our lesson to the experiences they shared. We also brought physical props like weatherizing strips ect. for people to have in their hands to get a feel for the materials we were discussing.

Going back further, I recall my experience working as a naturalist at a summer camp. Having a pig and active bee hive with viewing glass got the kids all extremely excited and engaged. Physical items for them to engage with really made the experience. From these experiences, it is clear to me that having learners engaged whether through asking them questions, immersing them in a performance, or holding a physical prop in their hands, has the best outcomes. When we are bored our mind drifts and that loss of focus means we aren’t retained what is being taught to us.

Over the last year the largest program I have focused on is our New York Food for New York Families, which provided free boxes of locally grown and produced products, alongside nutrition education and community resources. The main form of 'activity' performed was the physical distribution of the boxes, which always came with a list of products included and a monthly newsletter which discussed that month's fruit and vegetable, prep and storage tips and a recipe, as well as information on the farmers that provided the products. It was hard to measure the impact of these newsletters, as under the NYS grant requirements we were not permitted to collect any sort of data. The most information we had was the number of boxes distributed, and based on site location anecdotal information on population, age ranges etc.

However, knowing that some of our previous program strategies also involved this more indirect form of reaching community members (specifically SNAP-Ed and their one time events), I worked to develop outreach materials that were similar in design and content to SNAP-Ed flyers and recipe cards. I worked with our SNAP-Ed team to find the right information and the newsletters were provided not only to NYFFNYF participants, but SNAP-Ed participants as well.

One assessment tool I utilized was focus groups, working to meet with community members who were recipients of the NYFFNYF box program or past participants of SNAP-Ed. I also conducted surveys during distribution events to help identify the education that was needed for those communities. While these focus groups were helpful, they were often very informal and occurred simultaneously to the distribution event, so participants were distracted and did not quite know exactly what I was asking and why. It is my hope for the rest of this program, which ends in July, to conduct more formal focus groups of participants, in partnership with the sites they trust and that distribute the boxes each week. In terms of expanding nutrition education and information on local farms, I am always in awe of the engagement that our SNAP-Ed team gets from the community. Some of our SNAP-Ed educators visit our distribution sites to conduct recipe demonstrations that are lively and fun, and I think that this could be more educational by incorporating locally grown produce, and perhaps even visits from some of the local farmers to the distribution sites themselves.

Within the past year most of the events i have hosted/ worked have been either nutritional lecture style classes in a classroom, and cooking demonstration hands on classes.
The ones i am going to focus on where with classrooms 1st - 6th and partnered with BOCES natural resource educator.
some steps I would like to incorporate more especially in classrooms is somehow involving more movement, being a guest presenter is such a good opportunity to take advantage of the time and get the students moving.
Learning strategies I'd like to try is mentioning that we are going to be doing a cooking demo/ snack activity at the end, but as the very beginning getting all the students up and moving even with just dancing, jumping jacks, or squats jus to get the blood flowing and minds engaged.

One program that I was proud to be apart of last year was a collaboration between Family and Community Development and Primitive Pursuits 4-H. We came together to create a program called "Warm Up to Winter" where they invited families within the Family and Community Development and Primitive Pursuits 4-H networks and beyond to enjoy the outdoors in winter! It was a time for families to discover what you can do in the winter months outside, when it is a time of darkness and sometimes isolation.

Many of the instructional activities were direct hands-on experience and the family/children could do it in their own way. Families were able to try new things like start a fire, cook over the fire, throw projectiles and gather edible plants! This allowed everyone to be involved, regardless of their level of knowledge/skills- there was something for everyone. The goal was to get people outside and trying new things and that was accomplished!

These instructional activities were a good match because everyone could be at their own pace and level of understanding (we were meeting people where they were). We also gave families the freedom to participate and ask questions based on their comfort level. Our instructors were there to help facilitate and go with the flow of the group. Being flexible is key in these types of things, especially when it is weather dependent!

The families ranged from single parent households to families with multiple parents and children ranging from the ages of 2-14!

“Consider the planned programs that you have done in the last year. What were they? Who came? Which instructional activities were a good match for your outcomes and why?”

When I think of success planned programs last year, I think of two online programs on Succession Planning and Tax Awareness. Both programs targeted production agriculture businesses in the Tri County area, but since I teamed up with FarmNet anyone in the state was allowed to attend. Honestly, most attendees were from outside my “territory”. While both were full of great content and had high attendance, I worry that the structure lowered the overall successful outcomes. As we have learned, it is important to make the program interactive and to get attendees involved. Attendees were encouraged to ask questions, but beyond that there was limited interaction. If I were creating the programs now, I would adjust them to encourage additional participation.

As part of the K-12 team, I helped lead a workshop for New York State Master Teachers. I remember some feedback we got from a participant which mentioned that their favorite part was the visitor center scavenger hunt which helped them understand what resources we have available for them and their students. We could've just included the resources in a list in the Google Slide presentation but decided to make it more hands-on and engaging.

I did lead two workshops on my own at the National Science Teachers Association. The first one focused on the book guides we developed for children's books and it was well attended. The audience was K-5 teachers, they had great energy and participated in the activities while role-playing as their students. I divided the group in half and had each one read a different book and then explain it to the other one. Then we did some of the activities from the guides.

The second workshop was on a DIY Feeder Design Challenge. The group was about the same size as the previous workshop and the description included that we were going to actually DIY bird feeders. I brought all the materials that we would need, and due to some technical difficulties rushed through the presentation so that they could have more time for the hands-on activities, but I was disappointed that the majority of the teachers stood up and left after I told them we would be working in teams. I was quite surprised because that was the hands-on portion of the workshop, the fun part. It seemed they just wanted the links to the challenge and other resources.

For the future, for the DIY feeder challenge, I would make it hands-on from the start, step-by-step, instead of explaining the whole challenge and then doing the activity.

"What could you do to better understand your audience to motivate their learning?"

I met with some energy advisor colleagues from across the state earlier this week to brainstorm about the utility bill workshop curriculum. A suggestion from that group was to ask people what they want to learn about this topic ahead of time, so I could tailor the workshop to those interests. I think I will ask ahead of time "why are you interested in this workshop and what are you hoping to learn?". This will help me understand both the content the participants are looking for, and the the motivations of the group which will help me engage effectively with them while delivering the workshop.

"What learning strategies might you add to your programs and activities to help your learners to be engaged, learn, and want to come back?"

One learning strategy that comes to mind is 'choice'. This is something I regularly implemented into my teaching practices when I was in the classroom, and I feel as though there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to choice in our 4-H programming, within our county. When youth have the opportunity to choose paths, activities, objectives, etc. they have more ownership and value in their own experiences. I certainly think more choice opportunities would lead to increased engagement, and would ultimately lead to more learning as well. I have always found that when learners feel a sense of choice in their experiences, they constantly want to come back and engage in more opportunities. They may even inspire others to make their own choices and try something that they wouldn't otherwise.

Another learning strategy that ties directly to my programming area is problem-based learning. We're able to present real world problems and issues to our 4-H youth, and give them space to tackle these ideas in a supportive environment. I look to implement more problem-based learning as we move forward, to give our youth a deeper connection to their community and the world they live in.

So much great dialogue here! Thank you all for engaging and learning from one another (my heart is happy :)).

Loved the ideas shared and jotted a few down to try. Carl "build your own food system" sounds like a great tabling exercise and simple enough (I have often gone for the complex/uses lots of resources/a wee bit of exhausting to clean up)...so anything interactive that encourages dialogue is a huge win :)

Here is what I will respond to:

What learning strategies might you add to your programs and activities to help your learners to be engaged, learn, and want to come back?

I'm working on a Workday Learning series on grants and grantsmanship (a suggestion from all of you and a regular need). Today, I shared the idea with the Epsilon Sigma Phi board - they suggested adding a peer review team -- low risk of judgement for the participant but high value. I love it...so will put that in my proposal.

In my current role, I don’t facilitate nutrition workshops as often, but I still get the opportunity to step in from time to time. Within the past year, I co-taught a 6-week series for the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program (FVRx). While our instructional activities vary each time we teach the series, one constant is the weekly food demo. Whenever possible, we involve participants in prepping ingredients for that day’s recipe. I believe hands-on experience is incredibly valuable when it comes to learning new skills.

If a hands-on demo isn’t feasible, we still walk through the recipe step-by-step, discussing each ingredient and providing practical tips—such as how to save money at the grocery store, using items you already have at home, and basic knife skills.

At the end of each FVRx series, we help participants apply what they've learned. Depending on the group and logistics, we either accompany them on a trip to the grocery store or set up a mock pop-up store at the teaching site. This gives them a chance to practice their skills in a real-world setting, with our support and guidance available. It’s also a great opportunity to share even more tips for eating healthy on a budget.

Additionally, we ask participants to complete a survey at the end of the series to help us evaluate any behavior changes implemented since beginning the classes 6 weeks prior.

What learning strategies might you add to your programs and activities to help your learners to be engaged, learn, and want to come back?
I would use mixed formats.
Field-based learning- Demos on farm to demonstrate different methods for CPB management where the learners can see if the equipment would work on their farm.
Virtual learning-Workshops where growers can discuss what types of management has worked for them and why with a Q&A.

This year we organized a 4th annual soil health field day at Rodman Lott Farm, which was back-to-back with the NY Corn and Soybean Association's Summer Crop Tour. This has been one of our flagship events each summer and it just gets better and better each year. We have a kick butt planning team consisting of Cornell CALS folks (myself), three adjacent Soil Water Conservation Districts, CCE, NRCS, and the owners of the farm.


We always do a mix of seminars, good food and time for networking (very important), and hands-on workshops outside. All activities were well received.


I'm not sure what previous strategy to employ.


We do an evaluation each year (CCE Seneca takes this on), which has been one way to gauge interests. But actually the best way I have found is to debrief and use everyone in the group’s perception of how the event went to guide future success. We have a really great planning group and everyone is invested in making the event as successful as possible. This is a huge reason for our success.


People like equipment demonstrations so we are hoping to have that be a rotation in the outside portion of our program.