Moving programs to an online format during our current health crisis

[LoriAnne Barnett]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks to those who were able to join us today for our quarterly Local Phenology Leader Call. Something on everyone's mind is how do we continue to train volunteers to collect observations now that we cannot meet face to face? And how do we keep people engaged with their spirits up while we are all asked to remain at home? Here are several suggestions for you which may not be ground breaking but are a start. Because I've been operating in a "online" training and engagement mode for years, working with leaders across the country, I have captured a list of things I know work. If others have ideas please feel free to reply to this new forum thread and share!

• If your volunteers and participants have access to computers, consider hosting an online training as I do for the LPL Certification Course. I would recommend having people join for no more than an hour. I have also moved my entire Master Naturalist Training Program online so I can give you some pointers for using this with our most popular audience demographics. Using something like zoom meeting makes it fairly easy to engage people, especially if they have access to a camera on their computer or phone. Here is how I typically structure my online meetings/training:
• Open with a welcome and intro to using the technology. Ask people to familiarize themselves with the online tool you are using. I typically ask them to test it ahead of time and ask them to notify me if they cannot get it to work. I might set aside time in my schedule to sign on a half hour early to help people troubleshoot any technology issues. Ask them to mute their microphones unless they are speaking to eliminate background noise.
  
• Once we are settled, I ask them to share something positive, a reflection question on a topic of my choice. They can share aloud or practice using the chat box. Some people will feel more comfortable doing that.
• Then spend about a half hour on the bulk of your content. It works best if you are not doing a powerpoint/lecture style, rather demonstrating something or making it conversational so people are engaged. 
• If your online meeting software has the capability, put people in small discussion groups to answer a question, work on a problem, or generate an idea. This is where you can ask people to practice answering some phenophase questions together and report on how they would complete the observation sheet.

• If you don't have access to online software, email educ...@usanpn.org and I can help you with this. I am happy to offer my zoom link to you, and create one for you to use with your participants, so talk to me if you need this kind of assistance.
  

I think you could pre-load your trainings with some online instruction. Create a landing page of activities that they should complete prior to coming to your online meeting if you are having one. Some ideas for work to assign prior are:

• Use photos to have a crash course in capturing observations in your backyard. Record yourself on your phone capturing video of making an observation. Ask others to do the same. I have a photography lesson that you can also use, which includes an option for folks to swap photos and have other groups identify the species. I do this regularly with my Master Naturalists online and they have a good time with it. Have them post their teams photos in a google folder and then swap google folders for them to identify the species or phenophase. I also ask them to include a narrative description of the species leaves, flowers, fruits, etc.
  
• While this lesson was created for high school students, I think it will work for adults as well. You could assign participants a species to "research" prior to coming to your online training. Have them thoroughly investigate online the plant or animal. What to the leaves, flowers, fruits look like? When can we expect them to be blooming or active?
  
• In addition, ask them to research and complete a phenophase photo guide, even if you have those already created for your group. If not, they can help you build the stash of resources available. There are now seemingly an unlimited amount of photos online in Wikimedia Commons, Bugwood, USDA PLANTS database, etc, that are usable for education purposes so folks should not have a hard time locating pictures of almost all of the phenophases. They can even contribute some of their own photos.
  
• Ask them to complete our Observer Certification Course which walks them through the basis of using Nature's Notebook. *You must be logged in with your account to access it.
  
• Share with them the Webinar that Erin and our team hosted about how to use the new Visualization Tool.
  
• Have them also practice making observations on their own using our protocols and then bring them to an online meeting and review their responses. Have them take a photo at the same time so you can all see what they were observing.
  

If you are working with teachers who might need some ideas for working with students here are some thoughts:

• Older students (5-12 + Higher ed) Ask students to set up sites in their back yards since they cannot go to the school to capture observations. Have them complete the species research page that I linked above and/or create a phenophase photo guide. High School students should also be able to use the How To Observe Course if they have not yet started.
  
• If teachers are able to do online meetings, review the lesson plans for Phenology, Ecosystem, and Ecosystem Mismatches
• Teachers can also review the Exploring Phenology Data Lesson plan and create some visualizations for the students to review
• Record yourself on video going out to make observations and talk students through what you are seeing and why you are answering the protocol questions as you are. Ask them to send in something similar.
  
• Send them a prompt every day and ask them to write a response to an observation - find out if there are plants or animals that all or groups of students have at their house and ask them to email/post/etc. their observation by a certain time every day. Respond to the observation posts with an explanation of the correct answers based on what you see at your house.
  

These are all some initial thoughts. It is hard for me to make specific recommendations without knowing exactly what your current syllabus/agendas are. But if anyone wants to post theirs here and ask me/us what we recommend doing to cover part of the learning objectives for a thing that is typically done in person, I'm happy to do that! Let's see if we can crowdsource some terrific ideas.

I do want you all to know how much I appreciate you now and always! I know this is difficult but we can figure this out too. I am happy to help however I can so just give me a shout if you have questions and please do use this forum to share ideas, concerns, and celebrations of the little things with our community.

Happy observing at home!

In solidarity, la