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Changing Public Behavior > Themes > Outreach strategy/Implementation

66 Total Findings

A participatory workshop using pollution modeling, satellite images, maps, and discussion, enables farmers to identify pollution prevention efforts that are considered to be within their own control.  Farmers may not be willing to adopt measures that lead to lost income, even when they consider the measure to be effective.

A two-way flow of activities between college students and a watershed coalition can create a distinctive, mutually enhancing partnership that can lead to the development of new tools and resources as well as heightened awareness of needs by both students and local stakeholders.

Carefully tailor the water conservation message to address the specific circumstances of the target audience.

Carry out education outreach initiatives through community-based organizations that already have a relationship with the target audience.

Collaborate with local and county health officials, environmental and fishing group representatives, and interested local leaders in planning, conducting, and evaluating community outreach efforts.

Conduct voluntary and confidential assessments on individual farms, in cooperation with groundwater technicians. Develop an “Improvement Action Plan” for individual farms.

Convey water conservation techniques through hands-on training and talking through questions in a workshop style.

Design outreach to address farmer preferred learning style: Provide farmers with opportunities to solve a problem in addition to providing other standard hands-on outreach techniques such as opportunities for talking with specialists, field days, demonstrations, etc.

Design programs to: Provide an authentic experience, similar to what the participant will experience in their personal life.

Design programs to: Provide an opportunity to practice the target behavior

Design programs to: Provide direct experience relevant to the objective

Design programs to: Provide learning opportunities before and after the field activities to optimize knowledge gain

Design training to provide students with work in teams on a practical experience with interdisciplinary participants

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education. The program:

Develop program design and content to adhere to guiding principles for boating, fishing, and aquatic stewardship education. The program

Emphasize one-on-one contact.

Emphasize one-on-one contact. This strategy correlates with farmer willingness to change practices, but adoption of a new technology requires more than a personal conversation and data about the specific situation

Enable students to personalize their education objectives (through pre-course interviews)

Encourage teachers to include the following elements in their environmental education programs:

Facilitate farmer-led program design and implementation that leads to:

Facilitate farmers developing their own water quality management plans. Emphasize, peer information exchange in farm quality planning.

Feel confident about choosing to communicate through major public media and education campaigns because, if each goal is specifically addressed they can have a demonstratable effect on attitudes, knowledge, behavior intentions, and behavior change.

Focus outreach initiatives on a geographic area with a targeted audience

For conservation professionals:

Form a regional team to determine water education needs and coordinate team outreach efforts through a variety of techniques:

Generate local information and use it as the basis for local public education programs.

Identify specific locally-defined problems related to water conservation. These may not be what an expert would typically expect due to unique cultural or situational needs.

Make turf grass management courses readily accessible to golf course managers and provide instructor support for completing assignments and application to their own golf course

Present nutrient application simulations to farmers in a group, to give farmers an opportunity to learn what practices others are using and how they weigh aspects when making decisions about nutrient management.

Provide activities: That enable students to demonstrate mastery through a public presentation

Provide course activities with direct application to work responsibilities (appropriate to local context)

Provide face-to-face meeting opportunities: to allow for learning from others and to provide camaraderie (networking and moral support).

Provide information to farmers in three stages:

Provide instructor feedback

Provide landowners with hands-on, practical training about individual property management choices. Describe choices in the context of information about broader ecosystem science and impacts.

Provide staff training, and/or provide access to environmental experts for businesses not already engaged in pollution prevention activities. Aim to increase concern about liability.

Provide strategies and practice for differentiating objective information sources from biased information sources

Provide students with autonomy in determining content and timing of learning activities.

Provide the following when focusing on environmentally responsible behavior:

Provide the following when focusing on environmentally responsible behavior:

Provide the following when focusing on environmentally responsible behavior:

Provide training for real estate professionals in a supportive atmosphere accompanied by a field trip

Recognize the role of economic factors in behavior change:

Rely on these outreach components for a conservation initiative (Dietz, 2004 Symposium):

Rely on these outreach components for a conservation initiative (Dietz, 2004, Env Mgmt):

Rely on these outreach components for a conservation initiative:

Rely on these outreach components for a conservation initiative:

Structure activities at a field site in order to increase knowledge gain, but apply structured activity with care in order to avoid reducing motivation

Tailor materials to details of the farm operation.

Teach water science and build environmentally responsible behavior among students through “service-learning” experiences that apply principles of interaction and continuity: both of which are significant features of education that lead to learning.

Teach water science and build environmentally responsible behavior among students through “service-learning” experiences that apply principles of interaction and continuity: both of which are significant features of education that lead to learning. For example,

Teach water science and build environmentally responsible behavior among students through “service-learning” experiences that apply principles of interaction and continuity: both significant features of education that leads to learning.

The choice of type of visual, spatial information to use in an education program depends on the audience. Some prefer pollution modeling, others prefer satellite images and maps or simply the discussion generated by showing models and maps.

To build capacity among urban schools to deliver water education effectively and with a community-based focus, provide:

To teach recognition of key aquatic insects use narrated slide discussion and provide a live insect for reference

Use best education practices in organizing environmental field days for youth

Use farm assessments to identify pollution risks when the use of an assessment tool is likely to lead to cost-effective, voluntary actions to reduce those risks.

Use farm assessments to increase the likelihood of management changes for topics addressed in the assessment

Use financial incentives, where possible, to facilitate behavior change:

Use financial incentives, where possible, to facilitate behavior change:

Use multiple methods to introduce specific concepts. Repeat concepts throughout the education experience

Use simulation games to help increase participant flexibility in making choices

Use water education activities to provide “situated problem-solving” practice that can translate to workforce skills.

Use website resources:

Visual, spatial information is effective in stimulating group discussion when presented as part of a participatory approach.

With Latino youth programs, use place-based pedagogies so that the education of citizens might have direct bearing on the well-being of the social and ecological places people actually inhabit.


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