A View of Digital Scholarship in Extension

Methods to engage Cooperative Extension clientele are developing rapidly. Social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, videos, webinars, and blogs have opened up new venues for extension personnel to generate important information and deliver it in an expeditious manner.  There is no question that these methods are found useful by the information consumers; however, many universities fail to adequately address them in the promotion and tenure process.  Therefore, those in Cooperative Extension who are engaged in this area know the importance of delivering this information via digital methods to their audience, yet are unsure of the career value of the effort.  Junior faculty members must decide whether or not to pursue these avenues of information delivery based on often outdated and vaguely worded promotion and tenure documents. This ambiguity has caused participation issues within eXtension communities of practice, where digital information delivery is standard practice.  Traditional peer-review channels are well understood, but new, less formal, options are infiltrating academia as well. The ephemeral nature of some social media must be weighed against the preferred permanence of academic discourse.  A new examination of how extension content is valued by the consumer and by colleagues within the academic arena of horticulture is warranted.