Create: Demonstrate Value

Is your program, information or service applicable, useful, motivating and related to authentic needs? Will it be remembered, revisited, and recommended to others? How can you ensure you are providing value to your audience? One way is to adopt standards of excellence for program development and delivery. Continually assess and improve your efforts. Engage the valuable experiences and fresh perspectives of peers and seek their recommendations for improvement. Periodically, engage in a formal review process.

Adopt Standards of Excellence

Content coming soon.

Practice Continuous Improvement

Excellence in education isn’t an end state, but rather evolves through iterations of implementation and improvement over time. This means we continually monitor, reflect, adapt and innovate.

Key practices for continuous improvement

1. Reflection
2. Formative and summative learning assessment
3. Student evaluations and informal feedback
4. Online course analytics
5. Follow up surveys

Engage Your Peers

Content coming soon.

Keeping Materials Current

Revising programs and publications

Determine the scope of your revision. Does it involve:

• content updates,
• branding and design,
• integrating new technology and resources,
• increasing engagement and quality of learning experiences,
• creating new media,
• revising existing media or publications, or
• converting a face-to-face program to a hybrid or online program?

Once you have determined the full scope of your revision, you can gauge the expertise you will need to complete the project. Do you need to seek additional expertise?

Find and engage the right expertise

When you look at hiring additional expertise, consider the scope and cost of your project. Are you likely to need under $10,000 in services? If so, you may select a provider of your choice. If you need $10,000 or more in services, you must use vendors approved by UM Supply Chain Management. It is always a best practice to get multiple bids.

Engaging internal expertise

You may find the additional expertise you need within Extension or the University of Missouri. If so, there is a simple procedure to engage and pay the provider. Review our Hiring MU Service Providers guide.

Engaging outside expertise

You have two options for engaging outside expertise: hire an individual (a consultant) or contract with a company.

For some projects, you can hire an individual to provide services. For example, you may hire a consultant to edit a publication, provide voice-over services to convert a PowerPoint to video format, or peer review a curriculum or publication. Review our Hiring a Consultant guide.

For other projects, you may find you need to engage the expertise of a business. Review our Contracting with External Businesses guide. Also, review the Example External Vendor Contract. Remember, if you need $10,000 or more in services, you must use vendors approved by UM Supply Chain Management.