Contents 1 Purpose 2 Funding and Duration 3 To Apply 4 Review and Selection 5 Fellows and Reports

Purpose

The eXtension Fellowship Program, funded in part by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA) through the New Technologies for Agriculture Extension (NTAE) Program, is designed for mutual benefit of eXtension and the participants. The purpose of the fellowship program is to provide opportunities for qualified individuals, within or outside of Cooperative Extension, to work on a temporary basis through either sabbatical leave or other contractual arrangements with eXtension on specific projects that contribute to the Initiative as well as to the individual. Projects should be broad in scope and have implications for the initiative across multiple CoPs. Projects that intend to support routine CoP work and/or call for establishing a new CoP, should be managed through associated CoP processes, and not through the Fellowship Program.

Current ideas for fellowship projects include:

• Mentoring CoP Advisors
• How CoPs work--best practices and challenges
• How Extension organizations are institutionalizing eXtension
• The Scholarship of eXtension--best practices
• An ontology for eXtension
• Incorporating social networking applications in eXtension
• Futuring for electronic delivery of educational programming through eXtension
• Effects of eXtension on CES transformation
• Efficacy of blending electronic delivery with eXtension and face-to-face pedagogy
• Evaluating the impacts of eXtension
• Connecting local Extension educators and clientele with eXtension
• Positioning eXtension in today's web marketplace
• Market and audience analysis
• Integrating the work of CoP's with institutional IT groups

In addition, eXtension may also advertise areas of specific need that would benefit the initiative and could be addressed through the Fellowship Program.

Funding and Duration

Sabbatical proposals are welcome. Individual proposals may request up to $20K of funding. Generally, appointments are expected to be 1-year or less in length.

To Apply

The program will operate on a calendar year basis (i.e., January - December). The deadline for applications will be October 31 for the next calendar year. Once all proposals are received, they will be reviewed and selections will be made based on proposal merit, contribution to eXtension, and available funding. To apply, please submit the following information by October 31:

• Title
• Contact Information (Name, email address, phone number)
• Background (Include a brief description of your vision for eXtension and Extension; also include a brief description of your relationship with Extension)
• Work plan (Include a justification statement for the proposed work, a description of the work to be accomplished, benefits to eXtension and yourself, and deliverables, including anticipated scholarly outputs)
• Duration (Anticipated start and finish dates)
• Budget (Include any personnel costs and/or operational budget needs. Indirect costs are not allowable.)
• Copy of vitae/resume
• Three letters of recommendation (one of the letters should be from the Director/Administrator in your state's Extension organization)

Please submit electronically to:

Michael Lambur
eXtension Evaluation and Research Leader

mike.lambur@extension.org

Review and Selection

The proposals will be reviewed by the Director of eXtension, NIFA representative, appropriate staff member(s), and one member of the eXtension Director’s Council or Governing Committee. After selection, an appropriate staff member will serve as the fellowship liaison to eXtension.

Upon completion of the program, eXtension Fellows will be expected to provide a written report of their activities and accomplishments to eXtension. See below for completed fellowship reports.

Fellows and Reports

2008

Judy H. Branch
Extension Associate Professor
Extension Specialist, Family and Community Development
University of Vermont

Title: Cultivating eXtension Communities of Practice: Best Practices for Virtual Communities

Abstract: The goal of eXtension Communities of Practice (CoPs) is to facilitate CES faculty and staff throughout the United States in learning how to create opportunities for learning in a virtual environment for themselves and the audiences they serve. Because CoPs are organized around the creation, maintenance, and distribution of subject matter, competing objectives obscure the overall purpose of eXtension and confuse evaluation processes. Based on the review of the literature, I proposed this study to explore the relationship between the collaborative qualities of CoPs in the development of purposeful cycles of continuous inquiry in the dialogue, decision, action, and evaluation (DDAE) framework and the attainment of organizational goals. The facilitation of CES in understanding the power and productivity of CoPs can be supported with answers to the following questions: 1) What are the process dynamics of the CoPs?, 2) How well are CoPs functioning?, 3) What is the relationship between CoP collaborative functioning and productivity in meeting organizational goals?, and 4) Can an instrument or series of instruments be used to assist CoPs experiencing difficulty?

To address these questions, a mixed-method design was used that included a survey to assess collaboration among all leaders and members of the eight pioneer CoPs and a follow-up internet interview to explore collaborative processes with three of the CoPs based on the survey results, representing high, medium, and low survey collaborative scores.

Recommendations made as a result of this study include:

• Educate all CoP members about the characteristics of collaborative practice in general and the goals of CoPs in particular.
• Prioritize the eXtension budget to be used for technology services for the eXtension Web site. The common explanation from the members of three CoPs that “the technology didn’t keep up, catch up with us, as had been promised” may indicate a shortage of eXtension staff positions focused on technology. Perhaps it is time to eliminate startup grants or other items from the budget to be able to spend a greater portion of the eXtension budget on technological advancement—software and technicians to program it.
• Explore the resources needed to create an individual tracking system similar to amazon.com that could be programmed to collect CES outcome as well as output and input data. If eXtension had that capability, perhaps CES units would be enthusiastic about giving startup incentives and other support to faculty and staff for working in a CoP. This would free up eXtension to do more with innovative technology.
• In technology training sessions, help CoP members understand how wiki pages are published. Explain the steps that can be done in formats other than the wiki and the points at which they can be transferred into the wiki. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of transferring into the wiki, educational resources created in other formats. Explain other options for places to hold content from which it can be published if any are available. Help CoP members achieve a working concept of the whole process (perhaps graph it) from page creation to publishing and archiving.
• Publicize throughout CES the advantages of the history tab on every wiki page that can be edited. The history tab shows the amounts of authorship in every collaborative page of content, and it allows a publication to be rolled back to any version of the edit should a peer-reviewer have questions about the most recent version. Thus, the history tab contents can be used as evidence of the scholarly work faculty have done in eXtension for tenure and promotion decisions and as a safeguard against losing approved edited pages should someone edit a page of content in a way in which a CoP will not approve.
• Slow the natural progression for eXtension to become in its operation like CES, the parent organization. eXtension started with few guidelines and little theoretical explanation about CoP culture and expectations. Guidelines have now been published, and the bridge the eXtension staff was building while standing on it connects with CES in a Web site that is expanding daily. While it is a welcome addition to have written instructions about how to operate in the wiki, continued growth of prescriptive guides and institutional structure may hamper creativity and inventiveness and may divert productivity away from the central technological tasks only eXtension is equipped to develop and provide. If eXtension can give CES vast new audiences and systems to make educational accountability clear and easy, CES will find a way to give incentives and support to its workforce engaging in CoPs.

To see Judy Branch's full dissertation, go to Cultivating eXtension Communities of Practice: Best Practices for Virtual Communities (PDF)

2009

Jerold R. Thomas
Leader, Innovation & Change
Ohio State Leadership Center

Title: Engaging Local Extension Professionals to Develop and Use eXension to Improve Local Programming and Impacts