Laura A. Warner

Reflecting on a multidisciplinary collaboration to design a general education climate change course

Courses designed through multidisciplinary collaboration represent an opportunity for curricular innovation, but require a larger investment of university resources. This paper describes lessons learned from designing and pilot testing a general education course on climate change as a multidisciplinary team. The course will be required for undergraduate students to fulfill core requirements in natural science beginning in 2017 at a research university in the southeastern USA. This narrative study allows us to share our perceptions of best practices, challenges, and lessons learned based on participant observations and open-ended questionnaires completed by students during three semesters of pilot testing. We describe trade-offs involved in our decisions and propose that our design, which takes advantage of reusable learning objects and a hybrid format with online and in-class components, is an innovative way to create and deliver core curricula to large groups of undergraduates. Compared to an individual designer or designers from a single discipline, multidisciplinary design teams have advantages in creating activities that integrate disciplines, incorporating a diversity of scientific perspectives, and considering instructional design choices. Challenges included ensuring connectivity and calibrating the complexity of content and activities created by different designers. Given the trend toward interdisciplinary teaching and instructional design, this qualitative work may provide useful information to those undertaking similar projects.

Online Certificate Program Moves Participants to Advanced Stages of Concern for Social Marketing.

Social marketing is an underused strategy that agricultural educators can employ to bring about behavior change. We designed an online certificate program for Extension professionals and other educators based on an identified need for social marketing professional development. The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) served as the conceptual framework and stages of concern explained changes in concerns among Cultivating Community Change online certificate program participants. The purpose of the study was to describe participants’ stages of concern profile before and after the certificate program and identify how participants’ perceptions changed as a result of involvement in the certificate program. We collected quantitative data using the stages of concern questionnaire and qualitative data from participants’ open-ended discussion answers. Participation in the certificate program moved participants to advanced stages of concerns for application of social marketing in their work. The certificate program helped to broaden participants’ understanding and application of this technique and changed their perceptions positively toward social marketing. We consider the certificate program successful, and we recommend agricultural education professionals use online certificate programs to build Extension professionals’ and other educators’ skills to change behavior of their target audiences.

Associating Importance with Behavior: Providing Direction for Water Conservation Communication

This study identified differences in characteristics of High Water Users (HWUs) based on their perceived importance of plentiful water and their engagement in water conservation behaviors. Differences in the characteristics of high water users based on the level of importance they associated with plentiful water and their engagement in water conservation behaviors were identified. Communication needs and interests of HWUs were also identified. The Situational Theory of Publics (STP) was applied to explore why HWUs might perceive plentiful water to be important but may not feel personally responsible and may perceive barriers to changing their behaviors. Significant differences were found in terms of gender and race between the four primary groups of respondents identified (High Importance/High Engagement, Low Importance/ High Engagement, Low Importance/Low Engagement and High Importance/Low Engagement). The High Importance/Low Engagement group was identified as an important and potentially high impact public for communicators.

Segmenting Florida residential irrigation users by utility-bill “botheredness” and household budgetary constraints

ABSTRACT Homeowners typically and incorrectly exclude irrigation costs when considering utility bills. This research identified residents who are: responsible for operating irrigation systems, and highly bothered by their utility bill; the rationale is they will be most receptive to behavior change. Decision-Ade™, a segmentation strategy based on two multi-item variables: utility-bill “botheredness” (UBB) and household budgetary constraints (HBCs), was used to explore three UBB Segments. Average monthly water bills were analyzed for each respondent in the highest UBB Segment (the Bothereds), and Decision-Ade™ was used to segment along the HBC dimension, verifying that the Bothereds were not most bothered strictly because they are most financially constrained. HBCs were compared to respondents’ household income to observe how the two variables are related. The Bothereds had members that also happened to be in all ranges of HBCs. Though 60% of the Bothereds also were in the highest HBC Segment, 40% of them were in the lower two. About 60% of the Bothereds will likely be most receptive to changes focused on water-use practices rather than products as long as they remain financially constrained; however, about 40% of them might be more capable of incorporating product upgrades because of their financial situation and high level of motivation.