User Manual for CE Specialists with Campus M+P

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User Manual for CE Specialists with Campus Merit + Promotion

     Introduction
          New log in instructions
     Annual Reporting Checklist
     Themes
     Projects
     Tags
     Explore What's Happening in Cooperative Extension
     Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Reporting
     Organizational Reporting
            How Program Planning and Evaluation uses Project Board information
            Data elements
     Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Introduction

Project Board is an organizational information reporting system that enables CE Specialists to document their activities and impacts, meeting annual ANR reporting requirements. The information entered into Project Board is used for federal reporting, UC reporting, and other accountability and organizational reporting.

What are you required to report:

Themes - Describe your activities and accomplishments during the reporting year, include the following:

Narrative describing the background of your Cooperative Extension work, methods used, and outcome/impacts
Extension Activity counts
Peer-Reviewed Publications - Include only those that are specific to the project during the reporting year.

Projects - Describe research and extension efforts, particularly focusing on collaborative efforts with other academics in ANR and in other land grant institutions (i.e., multi-state collaborations).

How Project Board can help you:

Tell your CE Story in your merit/promotion. Outcome/impact stories must be submitted in Project Board on an annual basis and can be used as a starting point for candidate statements and supplemental documents in campus merit and promotion process.
Grow your network! Search for other academics, including CE Advisors’ for activities and projects happening in counties throughout the state. Keep an up to date list of projects so that potential collaborators can search for you too!
Get recognized! Your outcome/impact stories can be picked up for inclusion in communications such as the Federal Report Snapshot, materials shared with legislators, UC Accountability Report, Regents Budget documents, campus reports and newsletters, and more.

LOGGING IN - Revised Jan. 6, 2023

Open Firefox or Chrome (NOT Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, or Safari, which may work intermittently)
Go to https://projectboard.ucanr.edu and click log in. You may receive a notice at the top of your web browser about pop-up windows. If so, please enable pop-up windows for projectboard.ucanr.edu.
A new tab or pop-up window will display a Microsoft sign in screen.
Enter your primary UC Berkeley, UC Davis, or UC Riverside email address into the Microsoft sign in screen and click next. If there is another email address already displayed, click "User another account," and type in your primary UC email address into the Microsoft screen. You will be rerouted to your campus' single sign on webpage.
Enter your campus credentials [e.g., UC Berkeley CalNet ID, UC Davis Kerberos credentials, or UC Riverside Net ID] and click sign in.
Complete DUO authentication. Project Board may take a few minutes to initialize and load for the first time. When in doubt, wait a few moments and refresh your screen.

Troubleshooting

When I click on an icon, nothing happens.

You may need to enable pop-up windows for projectboard.ucanr.edu and wfa.ucanr.edu.

USING THE SYSTEM

General information that may help you use Project Board better:

You move to the different screens by clicking on the blue links in the top menu.
If you enter or change data, remember to click the Save button before you leave the page.
For narrative sections, you can cut and paste from word processing applications into the text boxes.
Hover over the “i” icons to get more information, definitions, and tips.

GETTING HELP

You can come back to Project Board Help at any time by clicking the Help button that appears at the top right drop down menu.

If you need further assistance, please contact the Program Planning and Evaluation Office in Oakland: Chris Hanson at christopher.hanson@ucop.edu or at (510)987-0628 or Kit Alviz at kit.alviz@ucop.edu or at (510)987-0027.

Annual Reporting Checklist

Google Document - View or download: Annual reporting checklist

Planning to retire or separate from UC ANR?: Off-boarding checklist.

Themes

Technical instructions:

Click on the Themes link in the top menu of Project Board
Click on the blue Add Theme button or click on the blue edit link of an existing theme tile.
Follow the onscreen instructions (hover over the “i” for even more help!) to complete each item in bold below.
To edit an existing theme, click on the Themes link in the top menu of Project Board, then click on the field of the theme which you would like to edit.

Naming your theme

The primary intent of completing a theme narrative is to share impact stories of your Cooperative Extension work. Themes are the subject matter around which your academic program is organized. Theme names can mirror your candidate statement sections (e.g., Research, Extension Knowledge and Information) or reflect broader programmatic categories (e.g., ANR Strategic Initiative names such as Healthy Families & Communities, ANR Public Values such as Protecting CA's Natural Resources, content areas such as Pest Management).

Describing the background

Consider including the following components when describing your theme:

Clientele: People or groups of people that a program aims to serve.
Goals: The purpose toward which an effort is directed.
Inputs: What is invested? Faculty, staff, students, infrastructure, federal, state, and private funds, time, knowledge, etc.

Describing the methods, outcomes/impacts

Include the following:

Outcomes/Impacts: Include quantitative, observational, and/or participatory evaluations to determine outcomes such as the number of people, acres, and other units affected when possible. Outcomes may include changes in:
- Learning (short-term; awareness, knowledge, attitudes, skills, opinions, aspirations, motivations)
- Action (medium term; behavior, practice, decision making, policies, social action)
- Condition (long-term; social, economic, civic, environmental). Impacts should align with the targeted clientele needs and demonstrate how the academic’s program contributes to ANR’s articulated public values statements and condition changes. Progress toward achieving impact (or anticipated impacts) is described for each theme. Evidence of impact (or anticipated impact) may be demonstrated through primary and secondary empirical data collected by the academic, workgroup projects, and/or inferred impact as shown through reasonable inferences from scholarly literature. Evidence of behavior change outcomes can be linked to indicators of potential/anticipated impacts.
Methods (Activities/Outputs): Keep the narrative about methods short. Describe the research/creative/extension activities and products created through such activities specifically as they relate to the measured outcomes/impacts you are reporting.
Methodologies to enhance equity, diversity and inclusion can be incorporated to demonstrate a commitment to integrating an equity perspective into programming.

Tips:

Outcomes may be achieved or realized years after projects and activities were conducted. Please describe the outcomes achieved or measured during the reporting period, even if they are resulting from activities from past reporting periods. Describe the previous methods used. These impact stories are very important!!
If preferred, you can create program/project sub-headings. Try to articulate the particular method to which an outcome/impact relates, otherwise it can be confusing for reviewers to match up outcomes/impacts with methods.

If possible, select at least one anticipated condition change and one measured outcome type from the lists provided.

Condition changes represent broad environmental, health or economic benefits at a societal level (recognizing that UC ANR may be only one contributor towards these long-term outcomes). Selecting one or more condition changes will enable administration to know how the efforts and outcomes reported in this theme relate to changing conditions in California and beyond.
Outcome types represent short, medium, and long-term changes that occurred as a result of the work described in your theme. Selecting one or more outcome types enables administration to know what level of outcome has been actually measured/articulated.

Examples and Resources:

Cooperative Extension Program Evaluation has evaluation templates, examples, and resources
2024 Practical Methods for Measuring Outcomes Training
UC ANR's tipsheet, Making Your Policy Work Visible

Extension Activity Counts

Technical instruction: Provide your Extension Activity counts using the arrows or by typing in the number directly into the box that says 0. Hover over the "i" for definitions and examples, also listed in the table below.

Background: Activity types were developed with input from CE academics to specifically document the type of work that is conducted in Extension. Since campus merit & promotion systems already capture detailed activity information, it was agreed that Project Board would only collect activity counts.

Activity Type	Definitions and Tips
Meeting Organized	Classes, short courses, demonstrations, field days, fairs, webinars, Extension meetings, etc. that you organize. Tip: If you organized a meeting and presented at the meeting, only count the activity once under meetings organized.
Train the Trainer	Trainings you deliver to professionals who then extend information. Tip: This does not include volunteer capacity building.
Educational Presentation at meetings	Oral presentations and posters that you deliver at meetings organized by someone else.
Policy Engagement	Extension of knowledge and information to clientele during any step in policy development and implementation, such as building relationships/leading coalitions; equipping decision-makers with the data they need to develop successful policies; monitoring and assessing formal decision-making by proper authorities; informing policy or regulatory compliance options and actions; etc. Anything listed here should not be duplicated in other activity types or publications.
Website/Blog/Social Media Managed	Management of specific sites/platforms/accounts you use to extend knowledge and information.
Media Outlet Program/Interview	Radio, television or other mass media outlet programs/interviews in which you deliver significant educational content via a media outlet program or interview.
Digital Media	Development of non-peer reviewed videos, applications, software, or other audio/visual educational products, recorded webinars, others. Print materials should be listed in non-peer reviewed publications.

Peer Reviewed and Popular Press Publications

Technical instructions: Copy/paste citations for peer-reviewed categories. Hover over "i" icons for definitions, examples, etc.

Privacy / UC Delivers

Technical Instructions: After writing your theme narrative, you can click on a link to the UC Delivers system to submit a public impact story.

Privacy information: Academic input informed the policy that themes will not be searchable and viewable by anyone other than system-level administrators (for accountability reporting), senior leadership, and supervisors.

Projects

Technical instructions:

Click on the Projects link in the top menu of Project Board
Click on the blue Add Project button or click on the blue edit link of an existing project tile.
Follow the onscreen instructions (hover over the “i” for even more help!) to complete each item in bold below.
To edit an existing project, click on the Project link in the top menu of Project Board, then click on the blue Edit link in the tile of the project which you would like to edit.

Projects describe at a high level the research & extension work that you are doing in your Cooperative Extension appointment. You can report grants as a project, or several grants as part of one umbrella project. Reporting projects also help ANR plan and report qualifying multi-state and integrated activities, and thus comply with federal mandates to collaborate with other land grant institutions. Projects will be searchable by others in ANR in the "Explore" feature of Project Board, which will hopefully facilitate collaboration and inform advocacy efforts.

Add and update descriptions of projects to describe the goals and methods for each project. Do NOT report outcomes by project; report your outcomes in the themes narrative.

Features: You can add collaborators to your projects and other people in ANR can search for your project in the Explore What's Happening in Cooperative Extension reporting tool.

Collaborators

In projects, you can add ANR collaborators and non-ANR collaborators when editing a project.

To add ANR collaborators, click Search the ANR directory, start typing a name, then click on the name.

To add non-ANR collaborators, click the + Add New button. Type in the full name of the individual, then use the dropdown menus to select either one UC institution or one other Land Grant Institution. If your collaborator is not with any of the institutions listed in the dropdown menus, type in the institution name in the Other Institution Name space.

Benefit of adding non-ANR collaborators:

- Specifying any qualifying Cooperative Extension and Agriculture Experiment Station academic collaborators from other state land-grant institutions will help ANR demonstrate compliance with the federal mandate to collaborate with other land grant institutions.

- Your project will show up in UC collaborations queries, which are a common request by UC leadership.

Tip: If you have a long list of collaborators, consider only reporting your main contacts or project leaders. Prioritize reporting those with other Land Grant Institutions.

Explore What's Happening in Cooperative Extension

This content is on the Explore webpage: https://ucanr.edu/sites/ProjectBoardHelp/Explore/

Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Reporting

FTE reporting varies year to year, but is typically due July 1st. Click on a link to below to see the most current call for FTE reporting with instructions and FAQs:

CE Specialists at UCB, UCD-VetMed, or UCR - Call for reporting

CE Specialists at UCD-CAES - Call for reporting

New hires FTE reporting instructions (campus version)

Organizational Reporting

Program Planning and Evaluation (PPE) uses the information collected in Project Board for the following purposes:

UC ANR's federal plan and report of work
UC ANR's contributions to the UC annual accountability report, sustainability report, Office of the President budget reports, ad hoc requests
Program planning & resource allocation (e.g., academic programmatic footprint report for Call for Positions)
Legislative/External/Internal Requests
Compliance with federal requirements (e.g., meeting 25% targets of multistate and integrated work)

Data Elements

The following data elements used throughout Project Board are used to facilitate organizational reporting:

Organizational Tags: Primary Program Area is a required field in Projects and Extension Activities. Condition Change is a required fields in Theme (outcome/impact) narratives and full time equivalent (FTE) reporting. These enables PPE to aggregate the unique work of academics as best as possible into broad categories for reporting. Definitions:
- Program Areas: The broad subject matters currently covered by ANR’s Program Team umbrella structure. In Project Board, assigning a Program Area to Extension Activities and Projects enables ANR to aggregate as best as possible the unique work that academics do in the field for accountability and advocacy purposes. View ANR's Program Team webpage for a complete listing of program areas.
- Condition Changes: Represent broad environmental, health or economic benefits at a societal level (recognizing that UC ANR may be only one contributor towards these long-term outcomes). Selecting one or more condition changes will enable administration to know how the efforts and outcomes reported in this theme relate to changing conditions in California and beyond. View ANR's webpage for additional information and a complete listing of condition changes.
Multi-state elements: These elements appear in full time equivalent (FTE) or effort reporting, as well as in Projects. This information helps UC ANR acquire and document compliance with federal requirements. Definitions:
- Multi-state: Efforts that involve Cooperative Extension academics from two or more states or Agriculture Experiment Station academics from two or more states.
- Integrated: Efforts that involve at least one Cooperative Extension academic and at least one Agriculture Experiment Station academic, regardless of state.

FAQs

1) ANR Portal is saying Project Board is temporarily unavailable. What do I do?

Project Board is rarely down for more than a few minutes; ANR IT may be pushing improvements to ANR Portal software. Wait a few minutes, refresh your web browser, and try again. Please make sure you are using Firefox or Chrome. If the problem persists, click on this link to access Project Board directly: https://projectboard.ucanr.edu

2) Who is required to report? What are the policies for new hires, individuals on leave, individuals retiring, etc.?

All Cooperative Extension Specialists. Exceptions:

New hires: If you hired on or before March 31, 202X, you are required to enter information for federal fiscal year 202X. If you were hired April 1, 202X or after, you are required to start reporting with for the following federal fiscal year 202Y.

On leave: As with DANRIS-X policy, reporting is optional for those on sabbatic or medical leave. But please consider entering any outcome stories because they will be useful for accountability and advocacy efforts.

Retiring: Please enter information into Project Board prior to your retirement date; the system is now open year round. Especially consider entering any outcome stories (in themes) because they will be useful for accountability and advocacy efforts.

3) How do I report my project outcomes? / Why am I not asked to report outcomes at the project-level?

User input over the years indicated that a project may not have measurable outcomes (knowledge gain, behavior change, policy change, condition change) each year. Thus, outcomes reporting is no longer required at the project level as it was in DANRIS-X; it is only required at the "theme" level in Project Board.

4) How far back do I go when I'm reporting information in Project Board?

You only need to report things that happened in the federal fiscal year period (begins October 1and ends September 30).

- Extension Activity Counts - activities that occurred during the period
- Peer-Reviewed Publication Citations - publications that were published during the period
- Projects that were active, including any multi-state collaborators, during the period
- Methods/Outcomes/Impacts are a little bit trickier. Use this narrative text box for describe outcomes that were achieved or realized during the period. We know that sometimes outcomes are measured or realized years after projects/activities were conducted, which is why we no longer ask for outcomes at the project level. Instead, describe the methods used in the past that led to the outcomes achieved/realized during the review period.
- If you have no outcomes to report, you may describe potential impact of the projects/activities that happened during the review period in the Methods/Outcomes/Impact section.

5) Where do I report the Extension activities and outcomes of students and mentees?

Describe these in the Methods/Outcomes/Impacts section of your themes.

6) The condition changes I selected when I reported my FTE do not perfectly match with the condition changes I selected when reporting my outcomes (in the themes section). Is this okay?

Yes. Condition change FTE describes what you are spending your efforts on during a fiscal year. Outcomes can take several years to be achieved, so it would make sense for those outcomes to be tagged to the condition changes of previous efforts.

7) COVID-19 Guidance

covid19 guidance_campus MP posted 20200709

8) I am retiring in the next few months. Do I need to do anything in Project Board?

Before your last day, please complete the items in this off-boarding checklist.

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