Post-its and priorities: A participatory exercise for understanding perspectives of diverse stakeholders

Abstract

We describe a participatory co-learning exercise that can help elucidate and navigate the unique perspectives of farmers, researchers, Extension personnel, and other agricultural professionals engaged in managing complex systems. We developed the exercise to help a diverse advisory panel collaboratively identify and prioritize ecosystem services for measurement in an experiment on cover crop mixtures. Post-event evaluations were positive and suggest that the exercise is a useful tool for participatory research projects or Extension programs involving a diverse group of stakeholders and complex systems.