Working Together & Building Effective Teams: North Central Consumer Hort IPM Working Group

Working in teams has increased the effectiveness of outreach for consumer horticulture Extension Educators in the North Central region. The Consumer Horticulture Working Group, funded by the North Central IPM Center, has delivered 4 successful webinars that have attracted thousands of participants, including hundreds of groups led by local Extension Educators. Collaboration has included the selection of timely topics, presentations by Extension specialists and faculty from several universities, with promotion and support by Extension Educators across the North Central states. Duplication of teaching effort is minimized and training reaches individuals ($10 fee) and groups (free), which are usually arranged locally by Extension Educators. Pre and post tests and webinar evaluations show participants learn a lot from these webinars and provide suggestions for future topics of interest across the region. Collaboration of team members is via phone conference calls and email discussions. The webinars are delivered via umn.connect with open access for participants with the web address. eXtension has provided the public access and promotion of the webinars through the learn.extension.org and hosts the paid registration for individual participants. Income supports the presenters, technical support, and can be used by individual states to further support their extension work in consumer horticulture.