Turfgrass specialists and Extension educators responsible for developing educational materials in the Master Gardener Program sought stakeholder input for an innovative curriculum by using innovative data collection methods. County agents, program coordinators, and volunteers from 11 Cooperative Extension Service districts responded to a Web-based, Delphi study. Interactive, online data collection methods provided rapid feedback in the consensus-building process. Extension personnel can use this methodology to develop similar consensus-building activities for other programming issues. Stakeholder input can be achieved, with minimum time and expense, while curriculum developers minimize wasted time in programming development that clientele may not find useful.
Mayfield et al. (Wed,) studied this question.