Courses

Learn about the concept of active listening and how to incorporate this skill into your workplace communication practices.

Learn how to respond to an active shooter situation in your agency.

Short description

Explore how to make your writing even better in this advanced writing skills course!

Gain a basic understanding of the importance of teams to your organization. The course provides a definition of teams and team process and outlines strategies to help your people become effective team members.

Gain a basic understanding of the elements of business writing.

The Capital Improvement Certificate provides the learner with a foundational understanding of capital improvement projects, financing of capital improvements, site plans for capital projects, and project management.

This course provides best practices for interpreters charged with developing programs where Civil War and Civil Rights stories intersect.

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The terms coaching and mentoring are often used interchangeably. A mentor is someone who shares their wisdom and can facilitate action that has a positive effect on our careers and lives. Coaching is a conversation that helps people develop their skills, achieve success, and reach their goals. This course will discuss the difference between coaching and mentoring and strategies for successful coaching and mentoring.

Explore the skills needed to be an effective interpretive coach. Coaching others to develop and deliver meaningful interpretation is rewarding because you multiply the opportunities for visitors to understand the relevance and significance of our resources. It gives you the chance to share your passion.

This course will teach you how to conduct accurate Internet research.

Learn about how to create effective performance reviews, first through defining performance reviews, describing the performance management cycle, and finally by going through the performance review process.

Explore the world of community gardening by learning how to initiate, structure, manage, and promote healthy gardening in your local community.

Gain a basic understanding of the importance of good customer service practices. This course outlines the six elements of customer service that help to make an organization successful. Communication techniques and strategies for dealing with problematic situations are discussed in detail.

Explore the four most important principles of managing wilderness: Preserve Wilderness and Natural Conditions, Protect Wilderness Benefits, Provide and Use the Minimum Necessary, and Manage Wilderness as a Whole.

This course will explore many of the facets of delegation, including when to delegate and whom to delegate to. We will also go through the delegation process step by step and learn about techniques to overcome problems.

Not a designer, but need to develop an interpretive media product? This course will teach you basic design principles that will help you put together a product that is both interpretive and eye-catching.

Gain an understanding of the use and purpose of Lunch and Learn Programs as a way to encourage informal learning in the workplace!

This previously recorded one-hour webcast is designed for park and public agency employees who are interested in obtaining the Certified Park Professional (CPP) or Certified International Park Professional (CIPP) credential.

In this course, you will develop an understanding of how the health of the environment directly affects human health. We will discuss issues related to the contamination of public lands and the importance of regulating chemicals. We will also explore how environmental health is directly influenced by legal actions.

Why do you write? Is it to inform, instruct, or persuade your audience? Or do you write to help your audience think or feel something new? Effective interpretive writers have basic skills in writing and understand the art and practice of interpretation. This course explores the reasons we write and teaches the essential elements of effective interpretive writing.

This course is an introduction to the basics of preventive maintenance. In this course, you will learn about the benefits of incorporating regular preventive maintenance into a facility management program.

This course is designed to assist individuals charged with approving Minimum Requirements Analyses (MRAs). The stories and case studies presented in this course are based on real cases and real MRAs. Learn More

This course is the third in a series of three courses on Cultural Resources Management in Wilderness. It provides a comprehensive overview of the process used to evaluate proposals for scientific activity in wilderness.

This course, the final course in the Paleontological Resources in Wilderness course of study, discusses the process of evaluating proposals for conducting scientific activity in wilderness and examines the decisions wilderness managers must make in order to preserve wilderness character during such activity.

This course has been created to make core facilitation skills better understood and readily available for your organization. It represents materials and ideas that have been tested and refined over twenty years of active facilitation in all types of settings.

Gain skills in effective methods for communicating with staff, colleagues, and partners.

Gain skills in methods for leading teams and developing staff ability to perform effectively.

Gain ability to ensure organizational goals and customer expectations are met.

Gain skills in hiring and preparing staff to be successful in their positions.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of what a team is and how to develop an effective team.

Gain skills in developing competencies and managing staff with competencies in mind.

Gain skills in developing competencies and managing staff with competencies in mind.

This course is designed for students and professionals who are interested in gaining a comprehensive understanding of the requirements for providing accessible programs, services, and activities within federal, state, and local recreation agencies.

This course will help you gain an understanding of the different movements in the history of parks, human health and natural environments. It will also provide you the tools to develop personal definitions for the terms “human health” and “natural environments.”

Establish a strong foundation in the basics of interpretation. This certificate program explores the history of interpretation as a profession and provides knowledge in roving, informal interpretation, audience identification and engagement, and interpretive talks.

This is the first course in the Paleontological Resources Management in Wilderness series. It focuses on the basics of managing paleontological resources found in wilderness.

Gain skills in recognizing safety and conflict situations in your parks and how to respond and de-escalate conflict.

This course will help participants learn why the way we deliver is feedback is important, how to deliver a message so that people accept it and make changes that may be needed, and how to accept feedback that we are offered.

This course provides a brief introduction to the benefits of facilitation in group settings.

Understand the basic principles of sustainability and green park operations as they apply to park operations and maintenance.

Understand how internal systems can be improved to best promote and implement green park operations within your organization and community.

Explore cost-saving sustainability best practices to implement as part of your park and public lands operations, and develop ways to reduce your organization’s environment impact.

This recorded webcast is designed for park and public agency employees who are interested in the history of parks. The session will include historical details, drawings and photographs of the people and places who make up the story, their objectives, successes and failures.

This course will prepare learners to develop a message and remain on topic when they are presenting that message to the media and public without straying from the point, or points, they want to make.

Explore the role(s) that the parks and recreation profession can have in making connections between the natural world and human health through this self-paced certificate program.

In this course, you will explore the many ways in which individuals have creatively engaged with the natural environment to improve individual and community health.

Do you have a strong background and understanding of interpretation (perhaps in programming) but want to dig deeper? Do you struggle with interpretive media or writing? Are you curious about what exactly ‘dialogic’ interpretation means? If so, this certificate program is for you!

The Intermediate Methods in Interpretation Certificate is entirely web-based and consists of five interpretive courses each culminating with an applied assignment that relates to your organization or site. This course of study provides you with the opportunity to receive feedback from your instructor(s) who review the elements of your portfolio. Additionally, if you apply for and are accepted into the cohort-based program, you will work with a mentor who has considerable experience in the interpretive field who will guide you as you develop your intermediate skills.

Stop! Before you register for this certificate program, are you an NAI member interested in completing it as part of a cohort and working with a mentor? The Eppley Institute and the National Association for Interpretation are recruiting students to participate in a cohort program that will begin in January 2020. Applications are now available. If you are interested in learning more and applying, please click here. If you would like to join NAI, please visit their website.

Short description

The purpose of this course is to help ABMC managers further appreciate their role as supervisors, coaches, auditors, and appraisers of interpretive programs and projects. Interpretive coaching and supervision are important responsibilities of ABMC supervisors.

New to interpretation? Want to refresh your understanding of the basics of interpretation? This course is for you!

Explore guided interpretive programs, which can take many forms: walks, hikes, house tours, canoe trips, bus tours, cave tours, just to name a few.

This course provides an introduction to capital improvement. Capital improvement is defined and its connections to an agency’s mission are discussed.

Explore a new approach to interpretation – dialogic interpretation. This course discusses three methods interpreters are using to present dialogic programs to visitors and guests.

In this course you will explore the core concepts covered in the seven courses in the Human Health and Natural Environments series.

This course is the second in a series of three courses on Cultural Resources Management in Wilderness. It provides an in-depth look at the special requirements of inventorying and monitoring cultural resources in wilderness.

This course, the second course in the Paleontological Resources Management in Wilderness course of study, provides an in-depth look at the inventory and monitoring process associated with paleontological resources.

The visitor is sovereign. Interpreters may hear this very basic but very important concept many times during the course of their career. What does it mean? It means that each visitor or guest brings a unique level of knowledge, interest, and care each time they visit a site.

Lighting enhances, extends and promotes the use of parks and public places after dark. The way we light our parks can have serious effects on public perception of safety and can cause negative effects on people and the environment.

Making the Case for Nature & Health: Theoretical Arguments is geared towards park and recreation professionals and students in park, recreation, public health, and related disciplines. No prior knowledge is required to take this course. This course is recommended to be completed fourth in this series.

This course will give supervisors and managers easy-to-use techniques for communicating across cultures.

Gain an understanding of how to have productive and safe difficult conversations with your employees and teammates.

Learn about relevant considerations for managing insects and disease in wilderness.

This course will provide wilderness managers a comprehensive overview of their role in managing mineral rights in wilderness.

This course will teach managers and supervisors how to prepare employees for the virtual workplace, create telework programs, build virtual teams, leverage technology, and overcome cultural barriers.

In this certificate you will learn the basic steps for decision making and management that are applied to federal wilderness areas, and how they can be interpreted and implemented on other, non-federal protected areas. These wildlands can benefit from the same systems and strategies the US government uses to identify the wilderness characteristics, develop plans for stewardship, manage visitor usage, and protect the natural resources.

Meetings come in all shapes and sizes, from the convention to a quick huddle in an office hallway. This course will be concerned with small working meetings; with groups that have a job to do requiring the energy, commitment, and talents of those who participate.

Micro learning courses are an excellent way to learn content in quick and focused segments. These concise and informative courses enable learning when time is limited. The use of video and other instructional techniques make this an engaging experience for the learner and provide a unique alternative to our full-length courses.

Photo by Isaiah West Taber - Sierra Club Bulletin, Vol. VI. No. 4, January, 1908, pg. 211 [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28233048

Micro learning courses are an excellent way to learn content in quick and focused segments. These concise and informative courses enable learning when time is limited. The use of video and other instructional techniques make this an engaging experience for the learner and provide a unique alternative to our full-length courses.

This course will allow you to gain an understanding of the different environmental attributes that affect human health. It will also discuss how our personal perceptions of the environment influence our behaviors and interactions with nature.

Learn about the process of evaluating proposals to conduct scientific activity in wilderness and the decisions wilderness managers must make in order to preserve wilderness character while such activity occurs.

Learn the importance of natural resource monitoring and what resources are appropriate to monitor in wilderness.

Explore how to make networking work for you!

Jump start your training with online onboarding courses!

Jump start your New Employee training with online onboarding courses! Upon completion of purchase, you will receive a code that can be redeemed for the New Employee Onboarding suite of courses.

Jump start your training with online onboarding courses!

Jump start your New Employee training with online onboarding courses! Upon completion of purchase, you will receive a code that can be redeemed for the New Employee Onboarding suite of courses.

Build a foundational understanding of facility management practices, particularly as they apply to parks and public lands agencies. The certificate program follows the Asset Management Process, an approach used by the National Park Service.

The purpose of this certificate program is to prepare park and recreation agencies to conduct a system master plan. The components can be used in several types of planning and will ultimately prepare agencies to either 1) conduct the planning process on their own, or 2) be prepared to collaborate with a contractor to facilitate the master planning process. This certificate covers the fundamentals of a system master plan according to the Commission for Accreditation of Park and Recreation Agencies (CAPRA).

Understand laws, regulations,and agency policiesrelating to health and safety and recognize common health,safety, and conflictsituations that may arise in parks.

Learn about various types of threats and hazards you may encounter as a park employee and strategies for responding to them.

In this webcast participants will learn to think about green space as a canvas; a piece of art where people can interact with everyday landscape in a new and temporary way. Ralf Witthaus, International Land-Artist based in Germany, will provide examples from the Federal Lawn Show in Cologne and other lawnmower drawings to teach a creative and alternative approach to incorporate art in public parks.

New to the procurement process? This course will help you to gain an understanding of how to obtain products and services from organizations outside your own.

This course takes a look at all the tools you need to introduce, and craft, an effective safety plan for your workplace.

This previously recorded one-hour webcast is designed for park and public agency employees who are interested in obtaining the Certified Park Professional (CPP) or Certified International Park Professional (CIPP) credential.

This course introduces you to industry-standard project management practices, including the phases of project management and useful strategies that keep a project on track.

The basics of project management can help you get things done at home and at work. This course will familiarize you with the most common terms and practices of project management.

This course will teach you how to manage your thoughts, body language, nervousness, and speech patterns to present yourself professionally. You’ll also learn how to present at meetings, use the five-S pattern to prepare a good presentation, and punch up your presentation with visual aids.

This course is aimed at improving your skills and learning new techniques that will give you the persuasive edge when you are making a presentation, fielding difficult questions, or presenting complex information.

Gain the skills and confidence needed to interact with visitors informally and learn how to provide them with interpretive opportunities. This course explores three types of contacts: orientation, information, and interpretation.

In this course you will develop an appreciation for the use of science in understanding the complex relationship between human health and natural environments. Topics include the scientific method, best practices for interpreting scientific reports, and identifying possible sources of bias.

In this course, you will explore the concept of sense of place and how it can be used to understand the relationship between human beings and our natural environments. You will also discuss environmental education and its importance in human health outcomes.

Explore how social media can be used interpretively to expand your reach.

This course will help you better understand special use permits and the roles and responsibilities of event monitors.

CEU include free for a limited time!

On average, 130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. The increase in the availability of opioid drugs is connected with an increase in opioid drug use and opioid related overdoses. Learn more about this epidemic and understand the true impact of opioid abuse.

Trees are as important as ever in our growing cities – the need to provide large canopied shade trees to cool cities is important. Providing adequate root volumes to allow large healthy trees to grow without infrastructure conflicts is also important.

Short description here

Gain valuable skills that will help you train impactful interpreters. Interpretive trainers support interpreters in connecting people to parks, museums, zoos, and other places.

Survey Basics and Best Practices for Park and Recreation Agencies will provide a brief overview on how to develop and distribute a survey. It reviews the reasons for surveying and how to construct, conduct, and use the survey data.

Gain an understanding of how to successfully transition to a supervisory role in your organization.

The causes of World War One are complex. This course explores the social and political factors that contributed to and shaped the conflict in Europe. The initial reluctance and ultimate participation of the United States is described and placed in a cultural and political context as well.

This course is designed to assist you in understanding, developing, and selecting management alternatives for a wilderness stewardship plan.

This is the first in a series of three courses in the Visitor Use Management course of study and is designed to introduce you to the fundamental principles of Visitor Use Management.

The third course in the Visitor Use Management in Wilderness series employs the concepts from Fundamentals and Strategies to guide the learner through the specifics of monitoring impacts from visitor use and its management.

This second course in the series provides a thorough overview of how to determine which strategies and actions to use when managing visitor use in wilderness.

Opioids are effective medications for treating pain, but they have a high potential for causing addiction, and some individuals may start misusing opioids, whether that is prescription or illegal opioids. The rapid increase in the use of prescription opioids has led to a dramatic increase in overdoses and overdose deaths. Furthermore, some people who misuse prescription opioids may start using heroin and other illegal substances with similar chemical structures that are cheaper and more readily available.

Join City Parks Alliance, World Urban Parks and World Parks Academy for a webinar exploring strategies for managing biodiversity in a changing climate.

In part two of this free webinar series, join us for inspiring ideas of play and resiliency from around the world. Learn about physical materials like playful care packages to combat social isolation in inner cities and Play It Safe Kits to re-envision streets for play; recreation opportunities using Indigenous games; and practical toolkits for families to connect with nature during COVID-19. Advocating for active and outdoor play at home and in parks and nature is uniting the world’s Parks and Recreation Professionals together to share ideas and expertise to help heal all families in the world. #naturenevercloses

Originating in England in 1996, the Green Flag Award program now recognizes and rewards over 2,000 well-managed parks and green spaces in 15 countries around the world. In this webinar we will explore what makes the program such a success - Is it the unique combination of peer-to-peer judging with political influence? The flexible approach to the 8 key criteria? Or its growing stance as a management ‘mantra’ amongst park professionals. In addition to this you will learn how you can apply the methodology to improve your day to day management of parks. Join us as we navigate these questions and more in this friendly and informative presentation. Learn More

This course is designed for park and public agency employees who are responsible for public health and safety in parks. A smoke-free playground issue will be covered.

This course describes the minimum requirements concept and guides users through the process of writing a Minimum Requirements Analysis (MRA) using the Minimum Requirements Decision Guide (MRDG) developed by the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center.