Home and Community Education

Directions for Extension Staff Coordinating HCE Lessons

HCE Lessons

Registering for IAHCE Lessons

Each summer, the IAHCE Extension Liaison will email the IAHCE lesson schedule to all those Extension staff who are representing and working with HCE groups. With staff changes, county directors and current Extension HCE reps are encouraged to update names and contacts of those who will be working with HCE groups. For any updates, please email the current IAHCE Extension Liaison, Cheri Burcham at cburcham@illinois.edu

The designated staff member will register their HCE groups for the lessons they want to attend and/or use. A link to the online registration will be provided in the lesson schedule. Lessons must be registered 1 week in advance of the lesson date. Lessons without sufficient registration will be cancelled.

Retrieving the Lesson Handouts

Staff may retrieve the lesson handouts by logging onto the University of Illinois Extension web portal. Click on “Intranet” (top red bar) >> “Teams” (left column) >> click on “Consumer and Family Economics,” “Family Life,” or “Nutrition and Wellness” depending on which lesson you want to print.
Setting up Zoom Calls

The Extension Educator that will be teaching the particular lesson will send registered counties an online meeting invitation prior to the lesson date. This lesson will be delivered via Zoom. The Educator will share their screen for the audience to view. Some offices may prefer to use their MondoPads to set up lessons. Turn MondoPad’s on far in advance to let them finish any needed updates.

To join the meeting, go to your Outlook calendar and click on the appropriate date to find the meeting. Click on “Join Online Meeting.” Staff may need to hook up speakers and connect to a projector for all participants to see and hear, if using a laptop or other computer. Please mute microphones on the Zoom call to prevent background noise.

HCE participants may use the message board or chat/IM box at any time and type in their question as the Educator is teaching the lesson. Reserve spoken questions until the end, unless the Educator instructs differently.

Retrieving Recorded Lessons

Starting in 2017, the FCS team will offer a select set of pre-recorded lessons. HCE members may listen to these lessons at any time, but know that an Extension Educator will not be available live to answer questions. Recordings of these lessons are available for download at go.illinois.edu/IAHCE.

Background on HCE and IAHCE

Illinois Association for Home and Community Education (IAHCE)’s mission is to “enhance the lives of individuals and families through quality educational programs and experiences encouraging responsible leadership and service to the community.” First known as Home Bureau Federation, primarily composed of farm wives, today, they are Illinois Association of Home and Community Education (IAHCE).

Around Illinois, an HCE district consists of a cluster of counties, and each county may have multiple HCE units. IAHCE members may choose to be “unit” or “mailbox” members. Unit members are individuals who belong to a county HCE unit. Mailbox members do not belong to any particular county HCE unit, and receive their educational lessons and HCE information through the mail.
For more information, visit their website: www.iahce.org

Extension’s Role & Lesson Planning Timeline

Illinois Extension's Role with HCE

The roles of University of Illinois Extension related to IAHCE are to:

Develop and teach research-based educational programs
Enhance the leadership skills of both members and leaders
Serve as a link to the greater University and Cooperative Extension systems in accessing resources useful to IAHCE

University of Illinois Extension’s “Family and Consumer Sciences” (FCS) team provides IAHCE with educational lessons related to the three program areas in FCS:

Consumer Economics
Family Life
Nutrition and Wellness

Lessons are divided into categories:

Educator-taught lessons: These lessons require more in-depth teaching and are taught by the Extension Educator via webinar or face-to-face.
Package lessons: These lessons are not taught by the Extension Educator.
Pre-recorded lessons: These lessons are Educator-taught lessons that are recorded and can be accessed at any time.

Lessons are designed to be in a train-the-trainer format. IAHCE leaders get the lessons and then are responsible for teaching the lesson back to members of their unit. Not all lessons HCE units use need to be produced by University of Illinois Extension.

Lesson Planning Timeline

January - FCS team will have news lessons and materials posted to the UIE Portal.

February-November - FCS team will deliver HCE Zoom lessons as listed on the current lesson schedule.

Prior to March - IAHCE Extension Liaison will ask for and sort prospective topics from IAHCE members and the FCS team. Prospective topics for the next year will be discussed as the Annual IAHCE Conference in March.

March - IAHCE Extension Liaison and 1st Vice Presidents at the Annual IAHCE Conference will discuss prospective topics for the next year. 1st Vice Presidents will vote on at least two prospective lessons for all three of the FCS sub-teams.

April and May - FCS team will choose new lessons for the new year, write lesson summaries, and decide if lessons are educator-taught (Zoom lesson), package lessons, or pre-recorded.

June - IAHCE Extension Liaison sends out lesson titles, summaries, and type of lesson (Zoom, package, pre-recorded) to IAHCE board and Extension contacts.

July - IAHCE Extension Liaison will send out lesson schedule for new year.

IAHCE Member Resources

HCE District Workshop Videos

Promotion of Lessons

In order to expand Extension’s reach, please consider opening the HCE webinars to the public in your local offices. With cooperation of your local HCE unit, hosting webinars in your local office would not only extend information, but also potentially recruit additional HCE members. If your unit does not currently have an HCE unit, please consider hosting the webinars for the general public. I would be happy to work with your unit on the logistics to do so.

Karla Belzer, Family Life Educator
kbelzer@illinois.edu