I. Accomplishments Section
Comparison of goals.
Goal I: Make available current research-based information to a wide audience who feed children in group settings through high quality, highly produced distance education.
Feeding Young Children in Group Settings is a distance
education course that was developed by the
The Feeding Young Children in Group Settings course provided eight hours of video instruction to the non-credit participants. Supplemental instructional activities and publications were developed and made available on our web site (http://www.ag.uidaho.edu/feeding).
Attention to quality was paramount. The video sessions for the Feeding Young Children in Group Settings course consist of four, two-hour programs. Seven to eight high quality real life video segments and highly produced graphics were developed to enhance instruction for each class session. Approximately 200 digital still photographs were shot and used to make high quality graphics for the course.
Participating audiences included Head Start teachers, center and family childcare providers, extension educators, nutrition educators, food service workers, and others who train staff and parents or parents on issues related to feeding children. Other participating audiences included university and community college students majoring in child development, nutrition, and education.
Students seeking academic credit received additional web-based instruction, delivered using WebCT course management software. The web-based coursework was developed around feeding principles supported by research and national organizations, including USDA.
This project would have been impossible without the collaborations we have with childcare centers, Head Start programs, USDA Child Care Food Program Sponsors, and family childcare providers. The value of real life teaching vignettes made the instructional materials for this course practical and real.
Experts from
Goal II
Use multiple formats to reach a diverse, distant audience.
Students took the course for academic credit, continuing education units, and as a non-credit professional development activity. The course was originally delivered as a combination satellite video and web-based course. Site coordinators, recruited to present the course in their local communities, provided local wrap-around programming. Government agencies and leaders in professional organizations in every state received information about the series. Many site coordinators also videotaped the series for later distribution.
Comprehensive support materials for prospective site facilitators were provided, as well as curriculum materials. All support materials for the live, satellite delivered course were available via the feeding children website. Printed curriculum and support materials for the course are in an Acrobat format and have been distributed almost exclusively via the web site. Nearly 700 copies of the instructional materials were downloaded prior to the broadcast. People downloaded the 15-page satellite coordinator’s handbook more than 800 times during the live satellite series production time.
The development grant allowed us to provide the satellite
video instruction at no cost to participants.
The web-based supplemental activities and publications also were
provided free of charge. Some participants
sought continuing education units through the
Video was an important instructional medium for this
course. Each of the four two-hour
broadcast sessions incorporated numerous video vignettes of real-life episodes
taped in childcare centers. To insure
that the video vignettes were culturally and geographically diverse, our
videographers traveled to taping locations in urban and rural settings in
The course is now available in three formats: VHS, CD-ROM, and DVD.
Goal III: Offer on-going accessible coursework and training at a distance to an audience that suffers high turnover rates and has a need for in-service that can be accessed when hires are made.
More than 600 sites representing 43 states, the
The Feeding Young Children in Group Settings web site has been a tremendous asset for continual marketing of the course, gathering information about participants, and providing instructional materials for participants who participated in the live delivery of the course, and for those using the videotapes of the series. During the time the site has been in existence, the web site received more than 25,000 hits.
Lessons learned:
Accessibility to our web-based materials presented a challenge to us. We did not budget for closed captioning of the video sections of our project. Further, as we originally developed the project plan, we did not think about accessibility to our web-site for people with vision impairments or learning disabilities. In hindsight, we would ask for close captioning funding, if we were developing the project again. We secured an on-campus grant of $2500 to retrofit our website for people who are vision impaired.
Because the real life video vignettes that we use in our series are so very, very popular among those who provide training for child care providers and Head Start staff, we hope to make a “trainers” tape. This will include one-minute lectures to support each of the vignettes, followed by the instructional vignette. Some of these will be included on our web page as streaming video.
We built our skills for distance education offerings through our work for this course. We are learning and our skills are evolving. We grew as distance educators. Our team is small. We relied on student help and part time assistants to help us develop and offer the course. The faculty involved numbers three! We serve as co-project coordinators for this nation wide project. As such, we learned content from each other, but more, we learned how to develop and organize an instructional website, how to make materials and distribute them in a form that provides convenience and accessibility to the learner, how to make video materials that are highly instructional, how to use webCT course management software, and skills for marketing courses to a diverse audience. We have an increased understanding of the audiences’ variability in access to technology and the variability in their technical skills to use the technology. Because of this, we have since developed CD-ROM and DVD versions of the project for the advanced user.
Our staff received a number of calls from first time users of on-line course materials. An invigorating part of the process of working with the first time users was the success our participants had as we talked them through learning to use the technology for downloading and printing materials.
The course will be offered for academic or CEU credit from
the
Slippage
All goals were met.
Brief description and
the URLs of any web-based materials relating to the grant.
Our project support web site is found at http://www.ag.uidaho.edu/feeding
This website serves several functions. Viewers find course registration information and program ordering information here. An especially rich section of the website is the section called, “Resources.” This section includes a bibliography that supports course objectives, as well as a comprehensive list of web links about feeding children. A very important part of the website is the set of activities and handouts to accompany each of the class segments. Also available is a complete site coordinators manual, including advertising material, certificates of completion, attendance forms, and evaluations.
II. Additional
Information
We had no cost overruns or unexpected high unit costs. The innovative nature of this project fueled enthusiasm among the project faculty and staff. Costs estimates for the project were within the actual costs of the activities, with the exception of unbudgeted costs for making the materials accessible to people with disabilities.
III. Breakdown of
Contributions
In the original grant proposal, we obligated $81,869,000 as our institutional match. The final tally for match was $97,869.00.