Responses to a First Time Use of Internet Inservice Training by Agricultural Extension Agents

The Internet is a powerful tool for distance education. When used for extension inservice training, it provides the benefits of lower training costs due to lack of travel requirements and the ability for agents and specialists over a large geographic region to exchange information and ideas. The Internet was used exclusively for a regional county extension agent inservice training titled iCurrent Issues in Cotton Fertility Management.i The first objective was to determine if Internet distance learning could effectively be used to teach a technical agricultural topic for extension agent training over a wide geographic region. The second objective was to determine the acceptance level for learning via the Internet by first-time users of asynchronous instruction. The inservice training material for the 3-wk session was posted on the World Wide Web. Eight university specialists from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama and over 50 extension agents from the same states engaged in Internet discussions focusing on the Web material and personal experiences. Responses to a posttraining questionnaire from agents who had never previously participated in an Internet training revealed that they were strongly receptive to this form of training. The questionnaire also clearly showed that the Internet can be an effective way to implement an inservice training within the U.S. Cooperative Extension Service.