Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/16
Outputs
Target Audience:The primary target audience for the SAY National Clearinghouse is an educator (e.g., agricultural educators, supervisors and parents) either engaged in informal or formal educational activities. The resources in the Clearinghouse range from full curricula to other supporting resources which provides educators a range of material that they can use in informal programs (e.g., 4-H) or in a formal classroom setting (e.g., FFA). The target audience for the CAST is safety and health professionals that develop curriculum and resources on a specific topic. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The SAY project was discussed and promoted during the following professional development opportunities: National FFA Convention and Expo, October 28-30, 2015, Louisville, KY. Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America Board of Directors Meeting, Feb. 1-2, 2016, Washington DC. International Society of Agricultural Safety and Health Annual Conference, Bloomington-Normal, IL, June 26-30, 2016, Lexington, KY. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Information about the SAY Project was provided to the NSC through meeting minutes, listserv updates, emails, conference calls, and face-to-face meetings. When appropriate, SAY Project announcements and resources were shared through the monthly eXtension Ag Safety and Health Community of Practice eNews and other dissemination avenues including the website, displays and presentations at various conferences and annual meetings. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
One of the key objectives was to review the current membership of the NSC and enhance its operations through having appropriate representation. This was completed by extending invitations to groups that were not represented on the committee during the first grant cycle and also confirming participation by the appropriate person for the existing organizations on the NSC. The enhanced National Steering Committee met every other month via conference call and twice during the grant year in Washington, DC for face-to-face meetings in October 2015 and March 2016. A small subset of the NSC was formed as a work group to focus specifically on the belief statements and guiding principles for youth working in agriculture. This work group prepared several drafts for the NSC before producing the final product. Currently, 25 organizations have endorsed the belief statement. The National Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources (AFNR) Career Cluster Content Standards (CCCS) completed a revision and released updated standards in 2015. Due to the new standards, the CAST, which was developed using Qualtrics, was completely redesigned to align to the new standards and to improve the ease of aligning curriculum and resources for inclusion in the SAY National Clearinghouse. After launching the new simplified CAST, it was tested by agricultural safety and health professionals and promoted for use to multiple groups. The SAY National Clearinghouse was first designed in a chart form through eXtension but the constraints of the formatting prevented it from being a searchable system. Therefore, one of the key goals during this grant project was the complete redesign of the Clearinghouse to improve navigation for educators. The Clearinghouse is now housed at Penn State, College of Agricultural Sciences, and educators can search for curriculum or resources by topic or by AFNR standard. Based on Google Analytics data, there are over 4,000 (new and continued) users of the SAY Project website during the grant period. Objective 1: Review membership and enhance operations of the National Steering Committee. Activities and Accomplishments: Membership of the National Steering Committee was reviewed to ensure the best representation by organizations with a significant interest in agricultural safety and health. Upon review, the revised NSC consisted members from 16 different organizations. The NSC met twice (October 2015 and March 2016) for in-person meetings in Washington, DC and met via conference call approximately every other month. The revised NSC reviewed and advised the SAY Project Team on meeting grant objectives. A subset of the NSC was formed as a work group that was actively involved in drafting and editing the belief statements and guiding principles for youth working in agriculture. Objective 2: Review and monitor vocational and technical educational standards to stay up-to-date on existing criteria and standards for youth working in production agriculture. Activities and Accomplishments: With the release of the 2015 updated AFNR standards, the SAY Project Team reviewed the new standards and determined which standards have an agricultural safety and health focus. The SAY Project Team reviewed the resources in the Clearinghouse and established their alignment based on the updated AFNR standards with an agricultural safety and health focus. Since the CAST was based on the previous set of AFRN standards, the CAST was completely redesigned using the new standards and an improved submission process. In addition to updating the CAST, the submission instructions were updated based on the new submission process. CareerSafe's online OSHA 10-hour training course continues to grow in popularity. They now report that 43 states are active with enrollment of over 11,000 students and just over 5,800 completions since they launched their program under the past SAY project. Of the students that completed the training, 60% are currently employed and 93% of those enrolled are 18 years old or younger. Objective 3: Continue to identify specific gaps in educational programming for youth working in agriculture. Activities and Accomplishments: To date there are the following number of curricula or other supporting resources in each AFNR Standard category: AS.02: Animal Systems Career Pathway (9); CS.03: AFNR Cluster Skills (21); ESS.01 Environmental Service Systems Career Pathway (11); ESS.05 Environmental Service Systems Career Pathway (8); PS.03 Plant Systems Career Pathway (7); and PST.02: Power, Structural and Technical Systems Career Pathway (12). The two categories with the least number of resources are animal systems and plant systems which represent a curriculum gap based on the current resources available in the SAY National Clearinghouse. Additional gaps include ATVs and electronic device distractions in work settings. The SAY Project Team presented information to large venues of agricultural safety and health professionals both regionally and nationally about the advantages of submitting their resources through the CAST. However, a one-on-one approach seemed to work well especially with owners of multiple curricula and resources to work directly with them on the submission process for a group of resources. The one-on-one approach worked well with Farm Safety 4 Just Kids and we are currently in conversations with the Progressive Ag Foundation and some of the NIOSH Ag Centers to take a similar approach to the submission of multiple resources. Objective 4: Assure ease of utilization of both CAST and the SAY National Clearinghouse for users. Activities and Accomplishments: Based on the AFNR revisions, the CAST, which was developed in Qualtrics, was completely redesigned and the ease of use was significantly improved based on a new format integrating the new AFRN safety-related standards. The Ohio State Curriculum Alignment Committee reviewed the redesigned CAST and realigned curricula and found them to be greatly improved and accurate. The SAY National Clearinghouse was limited because of the inability to search for various curriculum and resources. Therefore, the SAY Project Team worked with the Penn State College of Agricultural Science to completely revamp the Clearinghouse so that it is a searchable website so it can be searched by topic or by AFNR standards. The improved design enables educators to easily locate and access resources. Objective 5: Continue to promote Curriculum Alignment Submission Tool (CAST) and the SAY National Clearinghouse to End Users. Activities and Accomplishments: The SAY Project Team and members of the NSC promoted SAY through presentations or exhibits at the following events: National FFA Convention - Exhibit and safety demonstrations aimed at youth and safety curricula and resources that teachers could use in the classroom. International Society of Agricultural Safety and Health Conference - Exhibit and poster presentation. During this event, we added several additional sponsoring organizations for the SAY Belief Statements by our ability to talk to key agency leaders that were in attendance at this conference. American Association for Agricultural Education annual conference poster presentation. CareerSafe led our marketing efforts by designing display materials (tablecloths and tabletop displays) that were catchy and attractive, utilizing the SAY logo as the center peace. Continuing with CareerSafe's marketing expertise, especially in agricultural education organizations, we are designing a very active display at the upcoming FFA Convention. This display will involve 7 entities emphasizing some aspect of youth safety and a youth safety pledge. In addition to sharing materials in person at professional events, they were promoted via social media venues (Facebook and Twitter), added to the SAY website, and included in the monthly eXtension Ag Safety and Health Community of Practice eNews.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Belief Statements and Guiding Principles for Youth Working in Agriculture. 2016. Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, June, 8 pp.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
CareerSAFE LLC OSHA 10 hour on-line General Industry (Agriculture) training program http://www.careersafeonline.com/index.php/component/content/article/9-courses/90-osha-10-hour-general-industry-ag
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