Lesson Modules

Below is a list of lessons in the Ohio Watershed Academy and their lesson objectives. Anyone is welcome to browse this material.

1. Watershed Planning and Management: An Overview
   • Describe some of the basic principles associated with community-based watershed management and key elements of a watershed action plan.
     
     
2. Getting Your Watershed Group on Track
   • Identify common organizational development issues that watershed groups in Ohio typically face.
   • Distinguish organizational goals from watershed protection goals.
   • Describe some basic steps a watershed group can take to address organizational development challenges.
     
     
3. Running Effective Meetings
   • Identify several key steps involved in planning a formal meeting.
   • Identify the elements of an effective meeting.
   • Develop a detailed meeting agenda.
     
     
4. Group Facilitation Skills
   • Select appropriate group facilitation technique(s) to use in a given scenario and explain their use within the context of a meeting.
   • Describe the fundamentals of group decision-making process
     
     
5. Basic Negotiation Skills: Applications for Watershed Management
   • Prepare for and implement an effective negotiation in order to address, prevent, and resolve inter-personal and inter-group conflict.
     
     
6. Stakeholder Involvement
   • Identify key stakeholders in your watershed and assess their expectations and why they should be involved.
   • Identify each stakeholder's interests and roles these stakeholders may play in the development of a watershed action plan.
     
     
7. Social Assessment: Getting to Know Your Watershed Communities
   • Identify a variety of ways social data can be used for watershed planning and implementation and measuring progress on environmental goals.
   • Develop a basic plan for collecting social data.
     
     
8. Implementing a Watershed Plan
   • Identify several key factors that lead to the successful implementation of action strategies.
     
     
9. How Healthy is Your Watershed?
   • Use Ohio regulations to identify, for any water body:
     its designated beneficial uses; applicable water quality criteria; and its antidegradation classification.
   • Understand how beneficial use designations and antidegradation classifications are established.
   • Understand interpretations of laypersons on water quality standards and establish effective communication strategies.
     
     
10. Problem Definition
    • Apply techniques for generating initial watershed problem definitions that avoid common decision pitfalls.
    • Describe techniques such as situational analysis to help define problems effectively.
      
      
11. Developing Goals and Objectives
    • Develop goals and objectives that address known problems and stakeholder concerns.
    • Critically evaluate and refine objectives.
      
      
12. Data Collection with a Purpose
    • Develop an action plan to collect data to improve management decisions.
      
      
13. GIS: A Tool for Watershed Management
    • Describe various uses of GIS in watershed planning and management
    • Identify a variety of GIS resources that are currently available, including data sources, and how they can be applied to watershed planning and management
    • Identify several popular GIS software applications (including freeware) and advantages and disadvantages of each.
    
    
14. Watershed Management: Maintaining a Streams Dynamic Equilibrium
    
    
15. Outreach: Moving from Awareness to Action
    • Identify target audiences
    • Develop a preliminary outreach plan or product that takes into account the target audience's stage of learning.
      
      
16. Evaluation
    • Understand the connection between program planning and evaluation.
    • Develop a basic evaluation plan using Bennett's Hierarchy - a standard educational program evaluation model.
      
      
17. Estimating Environmental Benefits
    • Understand the terminology of environmental values.
    • Have a broad understanding of several different methods for calculating the $ value of environmental improvements.
    • Apply environmental valuation concepts to an improvement in water quality in your watershed using one technique: benefit transfer.