Project Summary:

Principal Investigator/Project Directors:

• Janice W Fletcher, University of Idaho
• Laurel J Branen, University of Idaho
• Erik T Anderson, University of Idaho

Description of the Agricultural Communication Network Project:

1. Project Objectives:


• Make optimal use of available resources for agricultural extension, resident education, and research by sharing resources between participating institutions.
  
  
• Train students for careers in agriculture, natural resource management, environmental science, human sciences and the food industries.
  
  
  
  Explain how the project relates to the Program Objective(s) and how the Project will contribute to achieving these.
  
  1. Project Objective:

  · Train students for careers in agriculture, natural resource management, environmental science, human sciences and the food industries.

  Instructors will provide a multi-modal course to address the challenges facing those in careers where they have responsibility for feeding children in group settings. These challenges include issues of providing adequate nutrition to children in a safe and developmentally appropriate manner. The course integrates nutrition, child development, and food safety concepts as they relate to feeding young children in group settings. The American Dietetic Association standards for feeding children in group settings support this integration.

  The content specialists for the proposed project have as their research focus, feeding children in group settings. The practical application of their research results will be integrated into the content of the course. Instructors for the course will offer the course nationwide with site facilitation by the CACFP monitors, Cooperative Extension educators, and higher education personnel at colleges and universities.

  A major purpose of the program is to make high quality training available nationwide to those who feed children in group settings. There is a need for such training. CACFP participants must have annual specialized training for its program participants, though the training is inconsistent throughout the nation. In 1999, the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP- cooperative Extension Service) announced the "Initiative for Child Care." This initiative focuses on providing high quality, research-based training and education to child care providers, child care directors, parents, and policy makers. Extension educators can access the proposed course to help meet the education needs of child care providers. A third audience is students in universities and colleges. Few full-fledged courses that focus on feeding children in group settings are offered to them. A fourth audience is people who are not CACFP participants or college students or in the service area of an extension educator who is offering programs. This audience may include rural/remote family child care providers who may access the satellite delivered portion of the course on their own.

  We will use satellite and web delivered instruction to offer the most current research and application information for this course. We can continually update the content via the web site, even after the initial offering of the course.

  We propose to use the following five key concepts about feeding children as a foundation for the course:
  1. Adults should sit with and eat with children.
  2. Adults decide what, when, and how food is presented to children.
  3. Children decide how much or whether to eat.
  4. Children need a variety of safe and nutrient rich foods.
  5. Children should serve themselves.

  Current research and best practice application strategies will be used to explain and support the concepts. Real-life video vignettes taped in child care and Head Start centers will portray these concepts.

  
  
  


2. Description of Agricultural Communication Network to be Developed or Utilized.

This program will be distributed nationally via satellite and the World Wide Web. The project will use the University of Idahos TV studio facilities to originate the satellite broadcasts. The programming will be transmitted by a commercial C-band uplink in Spokane, Washington. Although the University of Idaho owns and operates its own Ku-band uplink, the project directors have elected to use C-band distribution to facilitate more widespread use of the proposed program. It was determined to be more cost-effective to access the regional C-band uplink than to use the UI uplink and pay for Ku-band to C-band turnaround.

The Idaho Cooperative Extension Systems statewide satellite network will be used to download the programming in-state. Nationally, we anticipate that the programming will be downlinked at numerous sites in the ADEC satellite network.

The College of Agriculture at the University of Idaho has a well-developed communications infrastructure for developing and delivering web and telecourse instruction. We deliver an average of ten distance education courses per semester. We support and operate a multi-media development laboratory and operate our own web servers. The University of Idaho is currently listed as #13 of the "100 Most Wired Campuses" by Yahoo Internet Life.





Describe the Cost/Benefit Analysis for purchasing (or leasing) different types of facilities, equipment, components, hardware and software, or other items. (complete only if applicable to your project).



3. Agricultural Communication Network Programming:


• Dietetics Nutrition
  
• Human Ecology
  
  
  Describe the Programming and how it will contribute to achieving the Objective(s):
  
  We propose a multi-mode distance education course that focuses on feeding young children in group settings. A multi-mode approach will provide breadth and depth for the diverse audience of professionals who are involved in feeding young children in group settings. The live satellite programming will be very practical, while research and concept based. The web portion of the project will add a strong problem-solving, critical thinking aspect to the course. Instructors will integrate nutrition, food safety, and child development concepts. The integration for course content is compatible with the team approach that programs for young children use where child care providers, service workers, and nutritionists work together in the field.

  This proposed course expands a 1994 Ag*Sat sponsored live, satellite-delivered course, Feeding Young Children in Group Settings. The proposed program makes use of the newest technology to extend this very successful course that was offered to over 1,000 sites. We plan to update and completely revise the course to include web-based instruction as well as satellite delivery.



Detailed description of methods to be used in producing and/or delivering the programing.

This program will incorporate multiple modes of delivery, including live video broadcast by satellite, videotapes of the program for later viewing, and web-instruction. The multiple delivery methods will help us reach a wide and diverse audience, and will extend the programs shelf life.

For the satellite-delivered portion of the program, we will develop four components. The first component is broadcast-quality videotapes of real-life episodes of children eating in culturally and geographically diverse Head Start and child care centers. The course design relies on problem-based learning using the videotaped segments of episodes from child care and Head Start programs to link concepts and practical application. Another component is lecture segments that develop the five key concepts for the course. A third component is live and videotaped comments from experts in the field. The fourth component is a page on our web site where site facilitators can download a site facilitators manual and/or choose from a variety of wraparound activities to suit the specifics of the settings of their participants.

For the web-based portion of the course, students will use bibliographies for readings, handouts that extend concepts from the lectures and readings, interactive sites to share ideas with each other and the instructors, case study scenarios for analysis, and tools for evaluating their mealtimes with children in group settings.

This program offers flexibility to meet the needs of the diverse audiences.
The program offers credit or non-credit options that can be offered on campus and at a distance.

· College Credit Requirement:
The project offers college credit to those seeking careers in nutrition who may be interested in consulting with child programs or working for the Women, Infants, and Children program. Child development majors also will benefit from this specialized course. This offering increases college-credit options that lead to career advancement for staff in child care programs and Head Start programs. Students will participate in eight hours of satellite-delivered classes or view videotapes of the live broadcast, and the equivalent of seven hours of web-based instruction. The satellite-delivered classes will be offered in four, two-hour segments. The web instruction will include asynchronous communication, case studies, and on-line assessments.

· Non-credit Option:
Non-credit students will participant in all or some of the live, interactive satellite broadcast, or they may record the broadcast for later use. Site facilitators may offer the video portion of the program as a non-credit short course or workshop. The live broadcast interactivity will include call-in via 800 number, fax, and e-mail.

The satellite program may be taped by participants and then filed in the centers staff development library for later use. This option is especially important for addressing the needs of the time-bound audience. This option is expected to be used in child care centers where turnover among staff is common. The videotapes can be used to offer training to new hires.

The course videotapes will have a copyright. The instructors will ask that those who videotape the course request permission from the instructors so that use of the programs can be monitored for evaluation purposes.

Each satellite broadcast will be edited into stand-alone videotape modules so that child care centers and other agencies may purchase tapes at a minimal cost. Activities, readings, and other written materials will be available on the web.

Project staff will assist facilitators to help diverse audiences make the content fit their own levels of learning and needs. Site facilitators will work with the project instructors to tailor the materials for their local audiences. Within the site facilitators manual there will be choices for wrap-around activities, choices for suggested readings, and choices for developing the final projects. These materials will be available via a detailed site facilitators manual that can be downloaded from the web. Students directly registered with the college instructor will choose from options with approval and advice of the instructor.



4. Population to be Served and Target Audience(s):

Undergraduate students in child and nutrition related majors
USDA Child and Adult Care Food Program monitors
USDA Child Care and Adult Care Food Program participants
Head Start personnel
Child care center personnel
WIC educators
Family child care providers

Time and place for learning limit many of those in the targeted audiences for this course. Some of them have responsibilities in their work sites that include working with children from early in the morning until early evening. Time in the workday for in-service education is limited. This course can be accessible to students at the time and place of their choosing.



5. Collaborating Institutions and Other Partners:

This course originates from a cross-disciplinary effort of professors from three units of the College of Agriculture at the University of Idaho. The three units are Child, Family, and Consumer Studies, Foods and Nutrition, and Agricultural and Extension Education. These professors collaborated to offer the previous satellite-delivered program, Feeding Young Children in Group Settings. The proposed project has evolved from that cross-discipline collaboration. For this project, we choose to request consultation from colleagues at other institutions rather than collaboration. We choose to maintain the development details across our three units, while reaching out to colleagues at other universities and child care programs for consultation.

· We want to have excellent representation of current research, so we have chosen Susan Johnson, PhD, RD, as an expert consultant for the project. She is a professor at Colorado Medical School and a well-established and respected researcher in feeding children.

· One module for the project will be special issues facing those who feed young children in group settings. Madeline Sigmon-Grant, PhD, RD, a professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is an experienced, nationally known extension educator who has interest and expertise in feeding children. Obesity is her special interest.

· Cindy Heiss, PhD, RD, is a professor at California Poly-technical Institute-San Luis Obisbo. Her special skills are nutrition education, especially in web-course offerings.

· Because we want to provide diversity in the video vignettes for the course, Doris Fredericks, M.Ed., RD, will consult with us to help us gain access to a variety of urban child care programs. Her work is in a large, very successful program for the USDA-Child Care Food Program in California. Her knowledge about and access to a variety of geographically and culturally diverse settings is valuable in helping us develop materials that are nationally representative.





6. Additional Rationale for Project

In 1996, 2.3 million children were served in child care and Head Start programs using the USDA Child and Adult Care Food Program. In 1998, 2.6 million were served. (USDA Statistics, 1999.) This trend is representative of the increase of children in group care settings as well as the increase in the need for specially trained personnel who can provide supportive environments for feeding children in groups.

Education that integrates nutrition, child development and food safety is recommended by the American Dietetic Association. An examination of workshop presentations, conferences, and extension programming and college coursework reveals that few specific opportunities related to the feeding of children in group settings are available. More guidelines are being developed around research-based information, yet little research-based instruction is available. Young children are an at-risk group for food-borne illness, yet researchers at Washington State University found a lack of food safety knowledge among child care providers. They found that non-food service staff were heavily involved in serving food. Food-handling was generally done by all staff, not exclusively by designated cooks.

We continue to get requests from those who participated in our 1994 course, asking to use the course, requesting that we come to their site for a presentation, or asking for up-to-date materials about feeding children in group settings. In 1998, we had over 100 requests for tapes of the original course. Many of the requests are specifically for permission to use some of the video vignettes of children eating in group settings that we produced for the original series. We often use these vignettes when we make presentations to people at professional training meetings or at conferences. Other trainers routinely ask for copies of these materials.

We surveyed a random sample of 100 participants from our data base of 1994 Feeding Young Children Series participants; the response rate was 73%. A majority indicated a high need to repeat the series. Using the web technology, we can offer a program that results in a sustainable, easily up-dated, and readily accessible format. We can offer a continuing opportunity for audiences to use the course.





7. Significant Impacts:

Five potential outcomes are expected:

· Healthy, well-nourished populations, in particular, children

· Safe and supportive environments for children eating in group settings

· Direct service providers who are specially educated in providing appropriate environments for feeding children in group settings

· Accessible instruction, anytime, anyplace, both for credit and non-credit learners

· Real-life video vignettes that are geographically and culturally diverse available to be used in local workshops and classes. (These materials can provide a needed set of instructional aids for teaching the integration of nutrition, food safety, and child development.)





8. Describe the plans for evaluation, dissemination and assessment:

Evaluation:
The project web site and site facilitators guides will include two evaluation instruments that can be filled out and returned to project personnel. One instrument is targeted to the site facilitators evaluation of the program. The second instrument seeks evaluation of the program by participants in the program.

The Filemaker Pro software program will be used to maintain a file of sites and participants in the program. This software includes capability for developing a demographics file for each site and each participant. In our 1994 offering for the course, we kept records of participants as a part of our evaluation and dissemination activities. That file has been very useful in continuing to network with previous participants and to disseminate information.

Dissemination and Marketing:
· Brochures to advertise the upcoming course will be sent to Extension Educators, regional and state Head Start Training Programs, child care resource and referral agencies, national and state Child Care Food Programs, and participants from our 1994 data file. The brochure will include an e-mail address for making contact with the instructors, a URL to access our web site, and a surface mail application to request a site facilitators manual.
· Listservs for nutrition educators and child development personnel will be notified of the course and the URL for the web site for learning course details.
· The principal investigators for the project will market the course at professional conferences and meetings.

Assessment:
Assessment of student outcomes is built into the requirements for course credit. Participant assignments will include an application activity to demonstrates the concepts of the course. Non-credit participants can complete an open-ended assessment of their learning to reflect practical application of program content. Additionally, the site facilitators manual will include an applied tool for helping participants assess and evaluate their environments for feeding children in group settings. Students will be instructed during the course on how to use this specialized assessment.





9. Broader Impacts:

Potential for significant impact on the knowledge base, target audience, food and agriculture sector and network development:

This project has a two-fold impact on the knowledge base for feeding young children in group settings. The first impact concerns the understanding of the target audiences of best practice and research concerning mealtimes in group settings. The five key concepts selected for the foundation for course content reflect the research and best practices found in national and state guidelines. The potential of a widely available, low cost set of training materials increases the likelihood that the guidelines of these agencies will be understood and practiced by those working directly with children.

The second significant impact of the project on the knowledge base is that all of the materials we will develop will be available to trainers throughout the nation. The materials will be easily and economically accessed by other trainers throughout the nation.

Likelihood to encourage multi-state, multi-institutional collaboration and partnerships:

We will build partnerships and networks with and among several groups. We will cooperate with and encourage interactivity among students who take the course, participants who use parts of the course for training, site coordinators, and colleges and universities who choose to offer the course for credit. Our intent to offer and deliver this course nationwide allows us to meet, plan with, and cooperate in delivering the course with nutritionists, Cooperative Extension educators, Child and Adult Care Food Program sponsors, state agency personnel, child care center directors, and family child care providers. Because we plan to have synchronous (nationally available satellite delivery) as well as asynchronous instruction (videotape and web instruction) for this course, we expect to build many relationships. We are designing interactivity with and among course participants as major components of the course design.

Potential to increase minority representation:

The target audience for the course is those who work in providing mealtimes to children in group settings. This audience is predominantly women, many of whom are time and place bound. Nationally produced and delivered coursework is seldom available to this population. This project provides an opportunity for interaction among these underrepresented workers of American society.

Further, the materials we are developing for the course, specifically the real life video vignettes will be drawn from very diverse geographic and cultural area. We intend to provide a national showcase of providers and children across diverse settings in the United States.

Project staff will seek funding outside this proposal request to closed caption the satellite-delivered portion of the project. We hope to offer closed captioning to meet the needs of those who have hearing impairments.


Potential for national impact through identified outcomes:

The potential outcomes for the project include healthy, well-nourished children, safe and supportive mealtimes for children in group settings, specially trained people who feed children, accessible training, and culturally and educationally diverse training materials. We believe this project offers specialized and focused instruction for feeding children in group settings. The multi-mode format we are using for the course design offers a variety of options to the site facilitator and to the learners.

The national programs that will be impacted by the project are Cooperative Extension Programs who wish to address the new ECOP child care initiative, Head Start programs, and the USDA-Child and Adult Care Food Program. The reach of the program extends to those in very rural areas who have access to C-band satellite dishes. In our 1994 offering, several rural-remote sites were our most ambitious and grateful participants.

To encourage widespread use of the material, we offer this program at no cost to those who can down-link the broadcasts. For those who want to purchase tapes of the program, cost will be minimal. College credit will of course have associated fees.

We intend to sustain this course offering with the excellent support of the University of Idaho infrastructure for offering distance education. Our 1994 course is still being offered through the University. Based on our experience, we anticipate the videotape portion of the course will have approximately a five year shelf life. Because we teach the course on our campus and we will use the web-instruction as a part of that course, maintenance of the web instruction will be on-going.

The satellite course will be converted to videotape that we will sell at minimal cost to those who do not wish to download and tape from the live broadcast. This greatly sustains the reach and the life of the live satellite broadcast.





10. Proposed Timetable:

FALL 1999
Hire technician and instructional designer
Begin course design
Assemble materials for course
Begin design of promotional brochure

WINTER 2000
Videotape in child care and Head Start
Begin designing web portion of course
Complete promotional brochure
Develop mailing lists, email and surface

SPRING 2000
Begin editing video footage
Develop web portion of course
Design site facilitators handbook
Advertise satellite and web courses
Recruit site facilitators

SUMMER 2000
Complete editing of child care and Head Start tapes
Complete course materials
Develop satellite course scripts
Register site facilitators

FALL 2000
Produce live satellite broadcasts
Offer web instruction
Duplicate videotapes of satellite broadcasts





11. Project Personnel and Time Commitment:



PROJECT DIRECTORS:
Janice Fletcher, FCS 25%
Laurel Branen, FCS 05%
Erik Anderson, AEE 25%

OTHER PROJECT STAFF
Ben Troka, Video Specialist, AEE 20%
Ann Garnsey, DE Specialist, AEE 10%
Don Saraceno, Video Engineer, AEE 10%
Linda Fox, Department Head, FCS 05%


NOTES:
AEE = Department of Agricultural & Extension Education
FCS = School of Family and Consumer Sciences




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