Education & Outreach Videos

Every organization needs to have social media incorporated in its communications, but how can we maximize efficiency and output? Very few organizations can spare exorbitant amounts of time for social media, so how do we make the most of the time we’ve got? In this short online workshop, participants will explore: how to select and curate the right platforms and audience for their organization; how to hone in on the strongest and most efficient messaging and content creation strategies; how to effectively manage time with social media; and how to take advantage of free online options that make social media communications easier to manage. Near the end of the workshop, time will be set aside to pragmatically and quickly create a useful piece of content for an upcoming event, as well as Q&A/discussion so the group has a chance to address authentic and relevant inquiries.

Foreign languages. Cultural differences and isolation. Low education levels. Sometimes environmental outreach takes you way out of your professional and social circles. The Breaking Through Barriers training provides big concepts and practical tips to help you reach out to "underserved" audiences from all walks of life.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought thousands of new visitors to public lands. Many of these visitors have little prior experience with outdoor recreation. Connecting with these visitors is crucial both to growing our conservation audience and to minimize damage to parks and preserves. This session will give you practical communication tips, tools, and strategies to connect with new audiences. The session will explore multiple communications tools including website content, interpretive signs, social media, videos, and graphic design. Learn how to make all your content simpler to understand, easier to access, and more inclusive for diverse audiences.

Is your conservation organization interested in deepening its community engagement? Many organizations understand that efforts to gather feedback about conservation projects are necessary, yet community engagement for such projects is often used to affirm existing assumptions rather than an opportunity to gain new perspectives. As a result, workshops and surveys often barely scrape the surface of meaningful inclusion and engagement, resulting in feedback that is unintentionally biased and incomplete, and perpetuate the exclusion of marginalized communities in the conservation and outdoor sphere. This interactive workshop will detail the community engagement process undertaken by the Penn Trails Team for a large scale trail master plan in upstate New York, including a community engagement process designed to include input of non-traditional, or potential trail user communities. Stakeholder feedback was used to address issues of inclusion and access in the trail system and enhance community relationships. Learn about how your land trust can design a similar process, including the values that established the project design, methods of listening more deeply, and how feedback was integrated into trail designs and the final master plan. This workshop will also explore limitations and lessons learned to allow your land trust to explore what is appropriate for you.

Learn how land trusts, conservation organizations and parks professionals can start offering successful educational programming at their organization. From simple hikes and talks to passive educational programs like Storywalks and Nature Backpacks, explore the wide array of educational opportunities that can be employed to reach a wider audience and spread the organization’s mission. Dive into how providing educational programming can increase funding opportunities for the organization.

Outreach professionals in natural resources and environmental topics offer important services to society. Unfortunately, most educators have difficulty assessing their impact on audiences, which is needed to improve programming, demonstrate success and help secure future program funding. Easy to use methods for strategically assessing short-term impact were recently developed by Melissa M. Kreye at Penn State University. In this session Dr. Kreye will present these methods and discuss how they can be used to enhance the success of environmental outreach programs. Participants will learn easy and efficient ways to use survey questions to obtain meaningful measures of change in adult audience knowledge and motivation to change behaviors. Participants will also learn how to collect survey data that will allow for advanced forms of statistical analysis (e.g., regression, principal components analysis) and model building which can be used to predict potential broader impact. These techniques are particularly useful for educators who want to reach new/uninformed audiences, or programs that address collective action issues to advance the common good (e.g., invasive plants).

Over the course of three years, the Pennsylvania DCNR Bureau of Forestry has embarked on a multi-pronged effort to obtain input on its strategic planning process from staff, stakeholders, and the general public. They have utilized a mixed-method approach consisting of different survey methods, interview, and facilitation techniques to this end. Part of the work involved a collaboration with the Center for Survey Research at Penn State Harrisburg (CSR). Input processes have included public opinion polls, cognitive interviews, focus groups, online in-depth interviews, stakeholder surveys, and various meeting facilitation methods. A major effort has been participation in the 2019 and 2020 Lion Poll, which is a statistically valid sampling of adult Pennsylvanians. The Bureau used the Lion Poll to explore public opinion on the value of PA forests, threats to PA forests, value of Bureau services, and forest visitor and user experiences. Prior to the 2020 Lion Poll, the CSR team utilized cognitive interviewing, which is a method for testing the survey questions using an in-depth interviewing technique that explores the mental processes that respondents use to answer survey questions. The Lion Poll, as well as the other data collection techniques, will be explained with example results presented. This session is intended to give attendees ideas for how they might conduct enhanced staff, stakeholder, and public outreach efforts.

The 50 acres of property surrounding the Nature Center at Asbury Woods is bordered by major thoroughfare roads and suburban sprawl, but this small parcel of land holds a treasure-trove of ecological diversity and the perfect way to introduce new visitors to the wonders of nature. While it may not be the big forest or trail adventure that more seasoned outdoor enthusiasts seek, it has served as an ideal way to acclimate new audiences to the concepts of outdoor recreation, environmental education and conservation. As Asbury Woods expands and diversifies their outreach and inclusion programs, this parcel of property provides excellent opportunities to bridge the gap from concrete and cityscapes to the natural world. In this session we will discuss strategies for forming strategic partnerships to reach underserved populations in meaningful ways to meet all program partner objectives and techniques to ease the transition into outdoor, wooded and trail landscapes.

This session will explore the collaboration between The Allegheny County Library Association, Allegheny County Parks, Allegheny Land Trust and Western Pennsylvania Conservancy that led to the creation of the Nature Explorers Backpack Program. Piloted in summer 2019, this program supplied over 30 county libraries with backpacks equipped with materials and supplies to support families’ exploration of nature in their communities. A Story Map highlighting nature in Allegheny County invites families to continue that exploration at ALT and WPC properties as well as Allegheny County Parks. This workshop will include discussion of the continued collaboration under COVID-19.