Laboratory for Online Prevention Programs with Families
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projects: current & past
At present I am a minor participant in several exciting projects that allow me to continue to participate in the development of online prevention efforts. Below are some brief descriptions of my current activities as well as highlights of some earlier family life websites and activities.
Current
Program Development Workshop (2008-present)
In the Fall of 2008, I taught the graduate course in program development in my department. As the result of this work, I developed some new tools and strategies for designing programs for children, youth and families online. Over the next year I plan to create short professional development workshops for prevention and family life educators to develop skills in writing for the web, creating program logic models and developing engaging Web 2.0 activities for family members.
Here are a couple of tools that were developed as a result of this course:
Hughes, Jr., R. (2009, March 13). Guidelines for writing brief answers based on scientific information to questions for the web.
Hughes, Jr., R. (2008). Human development and family life website review.
Open2Learn -- Open Learning in Higher Education. (2006-present)
I use this blog to explore issues related to e-learning, higher education, prevention programming and family life education.
The major themes in this work are:
Community engagement by university faculty
Family Life Education and Prevention Programs
Just in Time Parenting (2008-present)
This is an exciting project in which I am only an adviser. Here you can find the major contributors and more background information.
This project team has been working for many years to design newsletters, email messages and other tools to provide new parents with information in a timely manner. Computers and mobile technology are going to continue to provide ways for us to educate parents in “just in time” ways. This team has demonstrated that newsletters can make a difference in important parenting behaviors. This summary of their research findings describes the importance of these brief educational interventions.
This is a brand new project created by Dr. Susan Walker at the University of Minnesota in which she is developing a framework, research strategies and some pilot activities to explore how social networking tools can be used in educational and support activities with parents. At present our most visible activity is the creation of a list of scientific references to this type of activity.
Past Projects
MissouriFamilies (2001-2003)
From 2001-2003, I was the principal educational architect of a team that created a website for families, MissouriFamilies.org that was designed to use the web as a basis for educating family members about human development, economic, nutrition, and other family related issues. This effort included a weekly email newsletter as well as other tools.
A major design component of this website was the creation of short answers to frequently asked questions that were designed to quickly answer people’s questions, but also led to longer and more engaging information. For example, we answered the question “What is the divorce rate in the U.S?” and in this answer there was a link to a more in-depth description of the demographics of divorce and from this there were links to Census Bureau data. This educational architecture was the basis for a strategy of engaging people in a more in-depth learning about a topic. Here is the report that we produced at the end of the first year:
Hughes, Jr., R. (2002). First Annual Report on MissouriFamilies. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri.
Report on the State of Missouri Families
One part of the MissouriFamilies website was an annual report on the State of Missouri Families. In many ways this is similar to other reports such as Kids Count (See Illinois Kids Count).
However, there were some important differences in the tools we created with the data and in the ways that we created these tools for people who would use these data and reports. For each county we produced a web page (e.g., Adair County), a PowerPoint presentation with a script (e.g., Adair Country), a one-page printable summary, and a news release. In each case these data presentation tools were designed to compare local data with statewide trends and to facilitate local analysis and insight of issues relevant to each community. One of the major limitations of complex data reports is that they are often only used by people that are fairly sophisticated users with data and technical skills. We wanted tools that local human service providers, school leaders and others could use to talk with others about these data. We hoped these presentation tools were simple enough that most local professionals could lead a discussion and analysis of these data. Also, by creating ready-made presentation materials we hoped that these materials would be more widely used. In 2009 a quick look at Census data, Kids Count and most other data intense websites indicates that these types of products are still not common.
Another important aspect of this work was some clever computer programming by Steve Williams that allowed us to generate the printed materials in Word, the presentations in PowerPoint and the webpages in FrontPage from an Excel spreadsheet of the data and three templates (one for the print version, the presentation and the webpage). This programming allowed us to quickly create individualized materials for each county without the need to handmake multiple materials. It also permitted us to quickly update or correct these materials.
Human Development and Family Web-Based Outreach (1995-1999)
My earliest efforts at creating online program activities no longer exists on the web, but can be found in the Internet Archives.
This website was designed to support family life educators and other professionals in their direct work with families. The major organizational features of this work are still evident in my approach to working with professionals today—providing good program models, addressing issues of evaluation and exploring technology tools and strategies for online program activities.
The most significant professional contribution during this period was the creation of the Human Development and Family Life Bulletin which is stored in this archive.
For an amusing historical reference to our thinking about the web in these early years, here is “A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Human Development and Family Life Information Superhighway” in 1995-1996.