378 - Incorporation of a Statewide Webinar Series into an Existing County-based Beef Cattle Extension Program

With the objective of continuing educational delivery while county Extension offices were unable to host large group meeting due to pandemic response regulations, a series of webinars were developed as a component of the Tennessee Master Beef Producer program. A secondary objective was to maintain a county-based approach to programmatic delivery. To reach these objectives, individual webinars (Zoom Video Communications, San Jose, CA; n = 9), each lasting approximately 1.5 hr were developed by UT Extension Specialists and offered between October and November of 2020 covering the topics of breeding and genetics, reproductive management, nutrition, animal handling, economics, health management, and forages. Questions were administered during the live session via the Zoom polling function to assess production statistics and collect evaluation data. The series was advertised in local communities through UT Extension County Agents. Agents were given the opportunity to choose as many or as few to incorporate into their local delivery and could choose to give producers the option of viewing at home, at socially distanced group meetings, or either. Interaction was limited to the chat function within Zoom with the expectation that attendees would make audio and video interaction difficult to manage. Total live participation was 8,009 and averaged 890 ± 15.3 unique views per session. Each webinar was recorded and posted to YouTube to be used by agents for later delivery. In-webinar polling showed that an average of 91% of the webinar participants planned to implement a change on their operation as a direct result of information provided in the presentation. Post-webinar Likert scale (1 to 5) analysis of participants indicated approval of speaker ability (4.52 ± 0.03) and content quality (4.51 ± 0.03). These results indicate a high adoption rate by agents and that webinars are an effective tool for achieving behavioral change through a county-based Extension system.