Section II.  Aware Respondents

One survey question forced a distinction between respondents who were aware of CAEE and those who were not.  For those who were already aware of the work of CAEE, a series of questions probed their perceptions about the organization, about benefits of CAEE membership, and about CAEE services and programs.  The tables in this section (and in Appendix B) summarize these data.

The “aware” respondents were asked to describe, in their own words, the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education.  Again, to retain the integrity and context of respondent comments, Appendix B presents 261 verbatim responses to this question. 

The next question probed CAEE-aware respondents, whether or not they were CAEE members, to describe the value(s) and/or benefit(s) of a CAEE membership.  Open-ended responses were content analyzed and are summarized below. 

* Total mentions do not equal total respondents as most respondents provided more than one remark.

Discussion Points:

·        Many aware respondents perceive the highest value of CAEE membership to be in networking, general information sharing, and training.  Respondents perceive additional but somewhat lesser value in advocacy and peer connection and support.  It bears mentioning however, that although there were only 31 specific mentions of peers and/or people, one can assume that peer connection and support is intrinsic in mentions of networking, general information sharing, and training.

·        Several respondents (n=22) mentioned that they don’t know about the benefits or values of CAEE membership.  An additional 9 mentions were made to suggest that benefits are difficult to realize in some areas of the state beyond the Front Range. 

Following the perceived value/benefit question, a set of questions asked respondents about their awareness and use of specific CAEE programs and services, the following few tables present the findings from these questions.  Table W2 below reports responses to the question, “In your own words, describe what you know about each of the following CAEE products or services” which was subsequently content analyzed.

* “Other” comments were those that did not fall into any of the three categories.  They included judgments about the usefulness or excellence of the service and comments about participation or use of the program. 

Discussion Points:

·        The question asking respondents to describe, in their own words, each of several CAEE services, solicited over 250 responses for each program/service.  Nearly two-thirds of these respondents did not know about the Resource Review, the Master Plan, and the Teacher Liaison Network.  Just under half did not know about the Guidelines, the Online Directory, and the EE Listserve.

·        By contrast, about one-third of the respondents could provide an accurate description of both the Online Directory and the EE Listserve.  Approximately one in five could provide an accurate description of each of the other services.

Table W3 below summarizes the finding from the question, “Indicate your level of (awareness and[1]) use for the following CAEE services, programs, and events.”

Discussion Points:

·       Highest percentage of program use (50% or higher) includes Teaching Outside the Box, the CAEE Website, and the CAEE Newsletter. 

·       Lowest percentage of program use (25% and lower) includes the Online EE Teacher Institute and the Diversity Roundtables.

A separate series of questions then solicited respondent remarks about level of usefulness and asked for explanations about “why or why not” for each of nine key CAEE programs/services.  Tables W4 and W5 below summarizes these data.

Discussion Points:

·       These data suggest the most useful services to these respondents are the CAEE Newsletter (94% total useful percent) and the CAEE Website (91% total useful percent). 

·       The least useful programs appear to be the Teacher Liaison Network (55% not useful) and the Resource Review System (52% not useful).  Caution should be used here however since these programs are targeted as specific audiences (i.e., K-12 teachers).  The effectiveness percentages summarized here may be more a reflection of a limited audience than an overall utility of those specific programs.

Total number of mentions for each program or service may not equal total number of content analyzed responses (n) for that section as some responses contained more than one idea.

Discussion Points:

·         Approximately 100 respondents offered comments for each of several CAEE programs and services.  These comments are helpful in distinguishing how specific programs meet the needs of these individuals.  The programs that are most helpful in terms of information provided, include the Professional Development Series (31 mentions), the EE Online Director (22 mentions), the CAEE Newsletter (76 mentions), the EE ListServe (30 mentions), and the CAEE Website (42 mentions).   

·         Perhaps the most telling finding here is the number of people who either don’t know about the program or simply haven’t used it – the don’t know comments were particularly high for the Resource Review System (22), the Teacher Liaison Network (24), and the Regional Networks (22).

·         In several cases, these programs were not relevant to certain respondents (e.g., the Teacher Liaison Network).  It is assumed that the higher non-relevancy numbers indicate programs that are more targeted to specific audiences. 

·         Convenience of location and/or schedule did not seem to be a problem except for the Professional Development Series which may be an indication of non-Front Range respondents.

·         Very few comments indicated poor program quality.  In only a very few instances did respondents comment about the questionable accuracy or the cumbersome nature of a program. 

Finally a cross-tab analysis was conducted of respondents who indicated their awareness and use of select programs and service against the usefulness of these programs and services.  Table W6 on the next page summarizes these data.

Discussion Points

·         Findings in this table indicate that most respondents who have actually used these programs find them either useful or extremely useful.  This might suggest that respondents who indicted they were aware of the program and also indicated it was not useful had in fact, never used the program; or said another way, if they had not used the program; it was therefore not useful to them. 

·         For the respondents who actually used these programs, the CAEE website and the CAEE newsletter seem to be the most useful (combined useful/extremely useful responses of 130 and 124 respectively).  The Professional Development Series and the EE List serve were also useful to many (combined useful/extremely useful responses of 80 and 70 respectively).  The lowest combined useful responses were for the Resource Review System (n=29).  The highest number of not useful response for those who actually used a program were for the EE Online Directory (n=11).

A follow-up question at this point asked, “what other services, programs, or events would you like to see CAEE provide”.  Responses to this question are provided in Appendix C. 

When asked to indicate the level of importance and performance (on a 5-point scale) for several major CAEE focus areas, respondents indicated the following (Table W7).

Importance was measured on a 4-point scale where:  1= not important at all; 2 = not very important, 3 = somewhat important, and 4 = very important.

Performance was measured on a 4-point scale where: 1= Poor, 2 = Fair, 3 = Good, 4 = Excellent

Discussion Points:

·         Respondents indicated that most all the focus areas were fairly important (means = 3.6 – 3.7). 

·         Respondents indicated that performance in all areas was at least fair.  Networking and professional development were rated slightly higher at a mean score of 3.2 or greater. 

A series of questions were asked about desired professional development and communication.  Specifically, respondents were asked two professional development questions:  (a) “To what other professional organizations (besides CAEE) do you belong?”, and (b) “Where do you seek professional development opportunities?”  Table W8 below summarizes the responses to these two questions.

* Responses do not equal total respondents (n) because respondents could select more than one response.

** Other responses included:  reading/self-study/ publications (n=11); other orgs. (n=9); my own org. (n=8); higher ed/college progs. (n=4); radio, conferences, TV/video (n=4); speakers, other professionals (n=3); not a priority; not envir. educator (n=2)

Discussion Points:

·        Although several respondents were members of the National Association for Interpretation (56), the National Science Teacher’s Association (49), and Colorado Association of Science Teachers (45) most respondents represented membership in a variety of other organizations (Appendix D).

·        The most frequent responses for desired professional development (>130) were for  workshops, in local, regional and national conferences, and continuing education opportunities.

In response to a request about preferred communication, “Check your top 2-3 preferences for ach of the following CAEE communication services”, respondents indicated the following.

Note:  Total number of mentions may not equal total responses/category as respondents could select more than one choice.

Discussion Points:

·        Most respondents prefer email communication for all services, although there is significant interest in website communication for most all services except membership renewal.  There remains minor interest in regular mail for some services. 

In order to segregate teacher respondents for answering some teacher-specific questions, respondents were asked to designate their work as primarily formal (PreK-12) or informal (or non-formal).  Table W10 below summarizes these responses.  Respondents who indicated Formal Education (i.e., school teachers) were then routed to a separate set of questions designed specifically for teachers.  The next section of this report summarizes those findings (Tables T1- T3). 

Discussion Points:

·        Not quite half of respondents work in the informal or non-formal sector; one third works in the formal sector. 

·        Respondents who indicted “other” work in the private sector or in fields not related to environmental education including health care, government, environmental management, accounting, and retired.