Success StoryEquiping Agents for Master Gardener Training



Equiping Agents for Master Gardener Training

Author: Richard Durham

Planning Unit: Horticulture

Major Program: Master Gardener

Outcome: Initial Outcome

The Extension Master Gardener training program generally involves approximately 14 weekly 2.5 hour sessions coordinated by county staff and delivered by county agents, state specialist, or local professionals. The coordinator must also develop and grade homework and/or quizzes and administer a final exam.  As state coordinator I maintain, with the help of a few specialists, a training manual that is uniformly used for Master Gardener education throughout the state.  However, we have never had a single repository for other educational resources for volunteer training.  Several years ago I constructed a shell for such resources on a wiki site housed on the college CITC server.  Although a few resources were posted there, it never really developed into a useful tool for agents. In fall 2017, Harden County Extension Agent for Horticulture, Amy Aldenderfer, suggested a task force be formed to develop agent resources for Master Gardener volunteer training so three agents and myself developed a template for agent training which we delivered in two locations in spring 2018, and we also developed a wiki shell where agents can upload resources they use in training.  The wiki shell consists of a separate page for each chapter in the Kentucky Master Gardener Training Manual containing the text of that chapter, and will eventually also house PowerPoint presentations, some with voiceover scripts or videotaped presentations, supplemental handouts, homework examples, and sample text questions. The site if found at https://citc.ca.uky.edu/groups/emgcoordinators/ and is password protected by MyUK/Linkblue credentials.  






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