Technology: “Powerful Tool” for Extension Programming During Pandemic
Dr. Reza Rafie being filmed by videographer, Joshua Maclin, for his Annual Blueberry Field Walk.
Dr. Reza Rafie, horticulture Cooperative Extension specialist at Virginia State University (VSU), first realized in 2012 the potential technology held for delivering Extension programming when he and a videographer created a 12-minute video on growing ginger. It’s been viewed more than 86,000 times since.
In March of 2020, as he was preparing for his Annual Blueberry Walk, the COVID-19 pandemic was shutting down the world with social distancing restrictions and threatened to halt Virginia Cooperative Extension outreach programs like Rafie’s. But remembering the success he had had eight years earlier with video, Rafie decided if the participants couldn’t come to the program, he’d take the program to them – virtually, at least.
He elicited the help of the VSU College of Agriculture’s (COA) Marketing and Communications Department, and he, along with videographer Joshua Maclin and marketing assistant Mark Klingman, went into the berry fields at VSU’s Randolph Farm and began videotaping the walk. With the help of Erica Shambley, COA digital content manager and assistant director of the marketing and communications department, the program was delivered on Facebook Live and was the first Virginia Cooperative Extension program to use social media to deliver information to the public during the pandemic.
Over 900 participants participated in the live virtual program, more than 20 times the participants who normally attended the program in person. It created a lot of buzz and set a precedent and a foundation for the virtual programming to follow throughout the coming year and will likely change, in part, the way VCE delivers educational programs in the future. The walk has been viewed over 2,400 times to date.
“It was a new way of doing things for 1890 institutions,” Rafie said. “This is another tool we can use in Extension to be able to communicate, serve our clientele and solve problems.”
As word got around, other institutions reached out to VSU to see how we conducted the Facebook Live event, he said.
More virtual programs soon sprang up, along with collaborations with other universities and between VSU and Virginia Tech, which together deliver the Cooperative Extension program in Virginia. The COA’s marketing department also purchased video equipment and held training sessions for those interested in learning how to take their virtual programs to the next level.
"Our virtual programming efforts created more traffic to our websites, especially in the area of videos. Our website views increased by over 300 percent, expanding our audience and extending our programs around the state, nation and even globally,” Shambley said.
The key to the success of virtual programming was not only working with the communications and marketing team who had the expertise in social media and video technology, but also realizing the need to partner with colleagues at VSU and Virginia Tech to bridge different areas of expertise, Rafie said. As he conducted more virtual programs on growing berries and ginger, he collaborated with research scientists at VSU and a nutritionist at Virginia Tech to deliver more comprehensive Zoom sessions that put additional focus on the plants’ nutritional benefits and ways to protect them from pathogens.
As new virtual programs emerged throughout the Virginia Cooperative Extension system, additional cross-university collaborations formed.
“Because of COVID, people were suddenly interested in growing vegetables for themselves in a home garden,” said Chris Mullins, a horticulture Cooperative Extension specialist at VSU. As a result, he was the first guest on “Get Gardening!,” a weekly virtual program that focused on home gardening created during the early days of the pandemic by the Master Gardeners at Virginia Tech.
“We look at the pandemic as a terrible thing, and it is a terrible thing, but potentially some good has come out of it,” Mullins said. “It’s pushed us forward in the way we use virtual programming and from an Extension education and outreach standpoint, I think we will forever be changed. We will go back to having field days, farm demonstrations, tours and workshops in person, but certainly this virtual part is always going to be with us, and it’s going to be a great tool for us to use in education.”
Dr. David Crosby, fish health Extension specialist at VSU, also collaborated with other Extension specialists to develop about a dozen virtual programs to help fish farmers with their aquaculture, aquaponics and farm pond management questions.
“We kept the aquaculture program alive through these virtual programs,” Crosby said. But it wasn’t always easy. Learning how to switch from video to PowerPoint and back again posed a challenge, but the biggest battle was Internet bandwidth. Working from home and not having enough bandwidth caused the technology to fail during some presentations, he said. The Internet slowed down so much that it caused the audio to drop out during presentations. “That was the major problem we ran into,” Crosby said.
But innovation comes with risks.
“Technology does, indeed, fail, and when it does, it not only hampers virtual programming but also the participants’ experience and engagement,” Rafie said.
Once, while conducting a Zoom program, the electricity went out. Another time, during a Facebook Live program, the phone overheated from sweltering temperatures in a high tunnel and automatically shut down. Holding the phone in front of the air conditioner vents in a nearby car allowed the live program to resume a few minutes later.
But the risks, which over time we’ve learned to mitigate, are worth the reward, Rafie said. He hopes VSU will continue to leverage technology and become a leader in virtual Extension programming. “Technology is a powerful tool, and it’s here to stay.”