2022 – Central District All Faculty Symposium – Horticulture, Florida-Friendly Landscaping (FFL)

 T. Silvasy, H. Wooten, K. Camm, UF/IFAS Extension Orange County

Situation: Interest in virtual delivery of extension programs continues to be in demand by clients. Extension education programs that don’t require people to travel or have transportation also have the potential to reach underserved and underrepresented audiences. Extension agents need to use a webinar platform that can offer the agent(s) safety and peace of mind when delivering programs. The zoom webinar license also allows larger online classes.

Methods: The horticulture agents at UF/IFAS Extension Orange County saw lack of a professional virtual delivery platform as a problem in their online extension education. Together they applied for a Central District mini-grant to fund the 500-seat webinar license. Revenue enhancement has been developed by asking for donations for the zoom classes and charging landscape professionals for Continuing Education Units (CEU’s) obtained from Zoom webinars.

Results: The webinar license was purchased in Dec. of 2021. As of March 1, 2022 we have conducted three webinars using the Zoom webinar 500-seat license. The topics included Edible Landscaping, Landscape University, and Lakefront Landscaping. The webinar license provided a safe environment to conduct webinars and offered peace of mind to the agents and staff helping to conduct the webinars.

Conclusion: We are not sure if the Zoom webinar platform is best based on user login requirements and cost. However, it is the best option we have at this time until agents, support staff can get training on how to conduct webinars to the public through Microsoft Teams.

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