Progress 09/01/20 to 07/31/22

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience is on-farm employees engaged in swine mortality management. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The on-farm staff participating in the project experienced both training and professional development as a result of completing the See it. Do it. Teach it. learning experiences developed and conducted for the study. The pre- and post-training assessments of participant competencies show thatcompetency-based educational strategies did have positive impact on both knowledge and physical competency. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The pre-training competencies assessment results were presented during the Industrial Partners Presentations at the March 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians. A poster presentation and abstract publication of complete research results was presented at the 2022 Iowa State University James D. McKean Swine Disease Conference. The complete research results have been selected for presentation as a poster and published paper at the March 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? An advisory panel of national experts identified key knowledge points and physical competencies for both effective carcass decomposition and pathogen elimination via composting. These keys guided creation of two learning experiences: "Preparation for Composting" and "Building the Composting Pile." Pre- and post-evaluations were completed onsite by a third-party verifier asking staff in charge of composting to train them on how to prepare and build a compost pile. Knowledge points and competencies were recorded as present or not. After pre-assessment, participants completed two learning experiences administered via Pork Avenue Training Portal that followed the "See it. Do it. Teach it." educational methodology. These learning experiences consisted of online learning ("See it.") followed by on-farm mentoring administered by pre-trained farm staff ("Do it."), and lastly an opportunity to teach a third-party how to do the task ("Teach it."), which was also the post-training evaluation. The numbering below corresponds to the specific quantified objectives listed above: In January of 2021, baseline assessments were completed on 5 sow farms, a gilt developer unit, and 24 wean to market operations completing baseline employee competency assessments with a total of 30 compost managers at these 29 different sites (one sow farm had two compost managers interviewed). Completed video shoot to gather required footage for lesson creation. Created an online video-based learning experience with interactive quiz for Part 1 Preparation for Composting and Part 2 Building the Composting Pile along with anSOP and In-Barn Verification resource for each part. The learning experiences were assigned to the farm staff that participated in the baseline assessment to complete the See it. phase of the training. Mentors were designated to lead the Do it. part of the teaching phase, and organizational and training sessions with the designated farm mentors were conducted. Mentoring was scheduled and completed once the online learning management software recorded completion of the See it. phase of the training. Mentors were instructed to go the site with the SOP which summarized the desired competencies in sequence with pictures. The mentors used the SOP to review all the information in person and demonstrate tasks as needed. After the Do it. phase was completed by internal farm staff, the Teach it. phase was scheduled with a third-party evaluator trained in the pre-evaluation phase. We were able to access 20 farm staff for pre- and post-evaluations that ensured a strong statistical analysis. Analysis was done using a paired t-test withalpha 0.05 in GraphPad Prism v.9.4.1. The average pre-training knowledge and competency score was 41% and average post-training knowledge and competency score was 74%. Knowledge and competency score across twenty farm staff participants increased by an average of 33 percentage points. Knowledge scores increased from 40% to 82% post-training. Competency scores increased from 41% to 71% post-training. This educational style improved knowledge by 42 percentage points and improved physical competency by 30 percentage points.

Publications

Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience ison-farm employees engaged in swine mortality management. Changes/Problems:While the project has proceeded steadily and well, we have encountered a few manageable challenges. One of the challenges was the amount of information our advisory team wanted to include as competencies in the video scripting. This led to a script that was longer than desired for best learner retention. To address this challenge, we decided to split the delivery into two learning experiences instead of one. The first learning experience covers all you need to do to prepare for composting mortalities. The second learning experience covers the building of a pile and starts to go into some composting bin management concepts. An additional challenge that we are currently working to address is that after doing the baseline assessments, it was clear that knowledge and competency baseline is currently low for what our advisory team laid out as ideal. It was also clear that any ability to change current practice needed to happen from the top down in the farm system. Adding some training and buy in of farm leaders needs to be a part of our training strategy as we work to impact competency levels on farm. We are planning to do a webinar to summarize what we found on farm and talk about competency opportunities prior to asking the farm leaders to also go through the learning experiences. Another challenge we are working to address is that most swine farms need more expertise with compost bin management. Of note, Professor Hutchinson's composting school site was outdoor management of compost piles instead of bins. Bin systems were most common on the farms we did baseline assessments on. We are working to address this by inserting scenes of bin management alongside of Professor Hutchinson's explanations of key competencies on open piles for as Professor Hutchinson explains, the key competencies are very similar whether the pile is on open ground or in a bin. We think that this ultimately is an advantage to the learner to see both and learn to apply the competencies learned to their farm's situation. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The numbering below corresponds to the numbered quantified objectives listed above: 2. Complete the Lesson 2 video, interactive quiz, SOP, and In-Barn Verification resources. 3. The education lab prototype delivery for remote training for all employees who participated in the pre-training assessment has been scheduled for November and December 2021. 4. The post-training employee competency re-assessment has been scheduled for February 2022.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Our project accomplishments during this reporting period include assembling the advisory panel, creating a competency list with the advisory panel, finalizing the IRB documentation, writing the desired end skill and learning objective based scripts, completing a week-long video shoot in Maine at the University of Maine Compost School, completing one of two training videos, Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and In Barn Verification checklist (IBV), and capturing baseline competency assessment dataon farm. The numbering below corresponds to the specific quantified objectives listed above: In January of 2021, baseline assessments were completed on 5 sow farms, a gilt developer unit, and 24 wean to market operations completing baseline employee competency assessments with a total of 30 compost managers at these 29 different sites (one sow farm had two compost managers interviewed). Completed video shoot to gather required footage for lesson creation. Created an online video-based learning experience with interactive quiz for Lesson 1 along with and SOP and In-Barn Verification resource. Lesson 2 is underway and estimated 80% complete at the end of this reporting period.

Publications