Professional Development

Consider registering for the Raise the Romm Summer series to explore this question - Educators, facilitators, and leaders are tasked with creating the container for people to learn, share, and thrive - but is your container really holding space for everyone? You are invited to attend one — or all five — of these special sessions focused on deepening our participant-centered teaching and facilitation practices. Each session we will come together to learn and share the research, philosophy, and strategies brought forward by our incredible featured guests, so we can be better prepared to tackle the barriers that prevent full inclusion and equity.

ISU Extension and Outreach Professional Development staff have identified relevant and meaningful topics for staff to explore through LinkedIn Learning to strengthen their supervision and management skills. This catalog provides a variety of topics and perspectives on management. You may want to discuss with your supervisor priorities for your online learning or explore on your own. This structure provides an opportunity for self-paced learning. You may choose to complete all sections in a particular course, including quizzes throughout the sessions; if completing a full course, you will receive a certificate at the end that could be shared with your supervisor or added to a LinkedIn profile. Or, you may decide to pick and choose the sections of a course that are most interesting or relevant to you. You may start a course and come back to it at any time. Your progress will be saved along the way. 

The events of the past few weeks have ushered in a deep sense of uncertainty. In the face of these fears, fostering a sense of safety and belonging starts with supporting each other. A great way to promote inclusion and support from afar is virtual team building!

Now that the majority Iowa State University Extension and Outreach employees are working remotely, they rarely get the opportunity to causally interact with their coworkers and managers like they would in a “regular” office.

While virtual teams have so many positive effects on production and work-life balance, they make organizations lose that “water cooler chat” that is so crucial to employee satisfaction and retention. Teams lose that opportunity to casually bump into each other and talk about things unrelated to work such as their home life, pop culture, and interests.

Some may think these interactions mean nothing, they are just useless small talk, but they actually impact team performance a great deal! When teams feel closer together and included, morale goes up, happiness goes up, and in turn, production goes up.

We all seem to be participating in video conferencing meetings with our teams. For remote teams, having an activity during a meeting that allows the team to take a few minutes to bond and focus on something other than work can help facilitate relationships and trust with their coworkers that they do not otherwise have the opportunity to see each other face-to-face. Find a variety of ideas and think about how you might foster inclusion and fun with virtual team building!

Free Webinar Series

Topics include: Joining, scheduling, and hosting a Webex meeting, navigating the meeting window, Canvas LTI integration overview. This webinar was also offered March 26 and March 27.

Learn how to login, create a meeting room, use existing meeting rooms, conduct a webinar or meeting.