Accomplish What? Navigation
Education is a powerful tool that can help you realize your water management goals.
As you go about your work, you may find yourself in a variety of circumstances – chairing an advisory committee, working with a lone property owner, or teaching a gaggle of fifth graders on conservation day. In every case you must analyze the situation, determine the “hook” or the “teachable moment” and use your communication and teaching skills to accomplish your objectives.
To increase the likelihood of success, you need to apply a logical process to developing and implementing an initiative and you’ll want to incorporate best education practices (BEPs) to whatever extent possible.
Selecting a Best Education Practice depends on your overall goals and what you want to accomplish. If you aren’t sure exactly what you want to do, try the BEP Decision Tree to narrow the possibilities.
Decide on a Strategy helps you to decide exactly what type of outreach effort is appropriate to the problem you want to solve.
Plan
Once you’ve decided what you want to accomplish, the Plan section of the website provides resources to help you reach your objective by using recognized program design and “diffusion of innovation” strategies.
Topics in this section walk you through steps to:
- Familiarize yourself with the “community of interest“.
- Define clear goals and objectives, in cooperation with stakeholders and the target audience.
- Inventory resources and constraints and adapt your initiative to capitalize on results.
- Design your initiative with a focus on your goals, audience characteristics, and resources.
Choose BEPs
Choose BEPs links you to BEP background information and provides a tool to help you carefully identify the best education practices that will help you accomplish your objective. Here, you choose one of three Decision Trees; each walks you through common scenarios you may confront and helps direct you to BEPs important for that situation. Or, you can jump right to Assess a Program to see how your initiative compares to BEPs.
Use Education Resources
This website provides a number of resources to put you in touch with good tools and the work of others. See especially:
Learn from Others
Learn from Others directs you to multiple opportunities to learn about water, water management, and water education or outreach. These include searchable databases, professional development, conferences, and events. We’ve listed some ideas here, to get you started.
