Online PLT Training for 4-H Volunteers

Project Learning Tree (PLT) is a national environmental education program that engages youth in hands-on activities to increase understanding of trees, forests, and related environmental issues. Written for classroom teachers, the PLT K-8 Activity Guide’s 96 activities are also widely used in nonformal settings such as camps and 4-H programs. The materials are only available through a six-hour workshop, which are offered by volunteer facilitators in each state.

Dispersed populations, large travel distances, and small budgets for volunteer development conspire to make it challenging to offer PLT workshops to 4-H volunteers in Florida. While a few 4-H agents have been willing to conduct workshops in their counties, most did not feel adequately trained or felt they had the time to offer this material to their volunteers.

With a grant from the American Forest Foundation, we developed an online version of the PLT workshop for 4-H volunteers. The program was initially designed to include six modules and three exercises to prepare and empower 4-H leaders to lead PLT activities. Modules cover information about environmental education (EE), safety considerations for taking youth outdoors, and how the PLT activities address 4-H Life Skills with experiential learning activities.

An initial draft online training program was pilot tested with six Florida 4-H agents and revised for volunteers in 2009. The debut training was conducted and evaluated with 33 volunteers in 2010. The evaluation included tracking online effort and questions, analyzing exercises and online discussions, measuring change in efficacy for using EE programs with youth, and interviews with participants. Evaluation data suggest that the program effectively introduces PLT to 4-H volunteers, expands the ability of the state program to reach this audience, and increases volunteers’ efficacy to use EE materials, but only 33% of those beginning the program successfully completed it.

Before the program was offered again, modifications based on evaluation results were made to improve this low completion rate. Modifications included re-organizing six original modules into three, paring down exercise requirements, clarifying instructions, updating marketing materials to communicate time and effort required to complete the course, and moving from an online course management system to a more user friendly web site.

The revised program now includes three learning modules presented using Articulate flash software and two hands-on exercises. After an introduction to the PLT program, participants are invited to complete the first assignment by exploring an activity on their own and reflecting on how they could use similar activities in their programs. Once the first exercises is submitted, participants are offered supportive feedback and sent a copy of their PLT PreK-8 Guide, which they use in subsequent modules and for the final assignments—to select, plan, and teach one activity.

The developer worked hard to make the online program accessible to those unfamiliar with technology and the EE program relevant to 4-H volunteers. Each module includes either video testimony from agents who use PLT or excerpts of educators modeling how to lead prepare for and lead PLT activities successfully with 4-H programs. Thirteen volunteers enrolled in the most recent offering of the training and 77% completed the program. After completing the program, participants have offered comments such as:

“Before this training, talking about trees would have been boring to me. With the guide, that topic as well as others has now given me some fun information to pass on to my children.”

“It was excellent! I hope other PLT workshops can be offered online in the future.”

“I found the on-line course to be user friendly and well worth my time. I would be interested in taking more courses to help me grow as a professional educator.”

“I really appreciated being able to work at this on my own time. "Live" workshops are great, but it is not possible to do this as often as I would like.”

This program is a fine example of transferring a in-person training workshop to an online format without losing quality or reducing the likelihood that participants will use the materials in the future. We have scheduled two additional offerings of the on-line program and plan to export it to other states.

The URL is: http://sfrc.ufl.edu/plt/materials_and_programs/prek_8_online_workshop/index.html

Files

flyer for online PLT training for 4H

The web site can be found at http://sfrc.ufl.edu/plt/materials_and_programs/prek_8_online_workshop/index.html The marketing flyer is uploaded