How have you used the Guidelines for Excellence? | eePRO @ NAAEE
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How have you used the Guidelines for Excellence?

Thu, 2016-01-07 19:01

The Guidelines for Excellence series has been developed over the last 20 years by NAAEE as a way of capturing our collective wisdom. We've reached thousands of environmental education around the world. As we think about the future and how to implement best practices, it seems like a great time to stop and reflect a bit about the Guidelines, how they are used, and how we can all improve our practice. To get the conversation started: How have you used the Guidelines for Excellence? What makes them useful? And, importantly, how can we make them better?

Thu, 2016-03-31 20:49

I have used the Guidelines to evaluate a Forestry Camp and My colleges and i are currently using them to evaluate a e-textbook. The e-textbook data though is showing preliminary data there are different factors then the six described in the materials guidelines.

Fri, 2016-04-01 11:34

Tina - This is interesting. It will be fun to see what those different factors are for an e-textbook. A question back to you. I assume you are using the EE Materials: Guidelines for Excellence in your review? I would think that given access to the Internet, links to website content and such, looking at Fairness and Accuracy may change as might Depth. When we used the EE Materials Guidelines to review videos and electronic games we found that we really couldn't apply much of the last two Key Characteristics - Instructional Soundness and Usability since the videos and electronic games weren't really set up with lesson plans or information for the educator. Keep us posted.

In reply to Bora Simmons
Tue, 2016-10-04 06:19

I'm using the guidelines in preparing to teach an Environmental Education course at a local college. One possibility would be to make the document more readily accessible/interactive by listing links to relevant articles, webinars, youtube videos, etc. directly underneath the indicator rather than in a reference section. It would make the information that much easier to access. I could see how it might "clutter" the document, so that could be a drawback--but it could help in connecting the reader to the relevant information rather than requiring the reader to sift through the reference section to see which reference goes with which guideline or indicator. Thank you for your work. I have found the Guidelines for Excellence very helpful. :)

Tue, 2016-10-04 17:45

Thanks Andrea. A number of universities across the country have used the guidelines, particularly the Guidelines for the Preparation and Professional Development, as they design their coursework.

I do appreciate your comments about trying to make the guidelines more user friendly. Obviously, we have posted all of them online as free downloads to increase basic access. But, that doesn't really use the power of the web to make them more interactive. We are in early discussions with some designers about what this might mean and how it could look/work. It would be interesting to hear from others:

What might make the guidelines more readily accessible/interactive?

While I have you (and hopefully others), take a look at NAAEE's Accreditation: Distinguished College and University Programs: https://naaee.org/our-work/programs/higher-education-accreditation We'll be announcing the Accreditation of another university level EE program at the conference. Accreditation is based in the guidelines.