The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires that ADEC share over-all peer review results with all those submitting full proposals to this program. The ADEC Program Panel and ADEC Board of Directors concurred with all the recommendations from the Peer Review Panels. They made no changes to the recommendations.

OVER-ALL PEER REVIEW COMMENTS While each Agricultural Telecommunication proposal is receiving peer review comments specific to the project, the following are over-all comments with respect to this year's grant program.

1. Nearly all the peer review panels commented that the proposals this year were better than last year. They said they thought that the willingness of last year's award winners to share their proposals on-line probably contributed to the over-all improvement in the field.

2. Peer review panels carefully weighed each project against the evaluation criteria. Some projects were judged to be "good ideas", but inadequate in terms of regional and national impact. The panels wanted to see programs that could be shared broadly. They wanted to support top quality work that would result in many states "buying in". They wanted to fund projects that were going to be sustainable.

3. In a number of cases panels thought the level of multi-state cooperation was inadequate, particularly when it came to sharing the money. While nearly all proposals talked about networks and collaborators there was concern that the project was really a one institution project (i.e. one institution was taking the money). The panels wanted to see principal investigators from more than one institution.

4. All panels included representatives from the 1890 and 1994 institutions. Nearly every panel noted that there were projects that could have involved these institutions. Involvement might have been in providing content or instructional expertise, as an upfront user collaborator or as a learning opportunity. There was concern that in some projects these institutions were included largely as a way to get the funding, rather than as a real partner.

5. There were technology concerns with some projects. The panels were particularly critical of use of technologies that did not reach across institutional and state borders. The panels were also concerned about last mile issues and the cost of technologies selected. Costs of technologies were considered in the short term, as well as costs in terms of maintaining and sustaining efforts. For example several projects proposed developing CDs, but did not adequately develop a strategy for ease of maitenance. The panels recommended that the database should be the primary form of development and CDs could be produced in the same way as a paper copy, but the plan should be in place from the beginning for the living digital document.

6. In some cases projects lacked adequate teams to really carry out the effort. The panels noted that it is rare that a single individual could carry out a complex national project and that in nearly all cases it was inappropriate for one or two faculty members to design and develop a product for others. Certainly end users need to be involved from the beginning and it is imperative that instructional designers and marketing experts become involved.

7. These projects are funded under the special research grant authority and the peer review panels looked carefully at the research and evaluation objectives for all projects. In a few cases, the panels found projects to be worthwhile in terms of action, but inadequate in terms of development of the field.

8. The panels positively endorsed projects that fix well with the ADEC Guiding Principles for Distance Teaching and Learning. They thought that a number of projects could be improved if there was greater integration among research, teaching and extension. They commented that the modular approach allows for components to come directly from research to use in both extension/outreach and credit teaching. The lines continue to blur with respect to use of educational technology.