Courses

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

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

Promote environmental responsibility by learning the tools to complete organizational audits.

This course will provide you with an introduction to Appreciative Inquiry (also called AI).

Promote organizational success by balancing intangible assets.

This course will help you to become a better learner, and as a result, make you a more valuable employee and well-rounded individual.

This previously recorded one-hour webinar will introduce different revenue-generating strategies agencies may use for long term financial planning.

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.

Gain an understanding of the effects of cannabis on the workplace, and identify methods for dealing with these effects.

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.

Promote healthy and appropriate conduct by learning to develop a sustainable code of conduct for your workplace.

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.

Promote meaningful communication by developing conversational leadership skills.

This course details how an agency should determine its needs and priorities in the development of a capital improvement program.

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

Promote workplace health by fostering an environment where workers can improve their conditioning and live a fitter lifestyle.

Gain understanding about transgender employees and the need for safe and inclusive work environments.

Gain an understanding on how to create successful proposals. This course focuses on sources of funding, types of proposals, and how to write the most effective proposals.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of how to develop an impactful webinar to engage clientele or staff.

This course will help you to recognize and hone your personal creative process.

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.

A medida que usted avance en este curso, aprenderá a apreciar este ambiente especial y las reglas que tenemos para protegerlo. También se enterará de las muchas maneras en las que usted genera un impacto en los Cayos y en sus recursos naturales. El tomar este curso y utilizar los recursos que aquí se proveen lo convertirá en un navegante más responsable y seguro.

This previously recorded one-hour webinar will introduce participants to best practices in identifying data sources, creating data, and using data for management decision-making.

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.

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

New to budgeting? This course covers the basics of budgeting for those that have limited experience in developing and managing operations budgets.

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 will teach you how to research any topic using a number of different tools.

In this course, you will learn what diversity means. You’ll also consider how your world has changed and how stereotypes impact people. Then, you’ll learn how to use the four cornerstones of diversity and the STOP technique to encourage a diverse workplace.

This course will teach you how to use a variety of planning and scheduling tools, including the work breakdown structure, network diagrams, program evaluation and review technique (PERT), and Gantt charts.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of sustainability and how to apply social responsibility in a business context to contribute to positive workplaces, communities, and futures.

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.

This course highlights revenue sources and finance mechanisms for capital improvements.

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.

Gain an appreciation of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary’s special resources and the important rules that protect both the resources and boaters in the Keys.

Para ver este curso en español, haga clic aquí.

Establish a strong foundation in the physical and programmatic components of accessibility compliance. This certificate program explores disability and accessibility as a social construct and provides knowledge in disability awareness concepts, program access, universal design, and guidelines and standards for accessible design.

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.

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 course will give you the skills and tools to hire successful candidates.

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.

Gain an understanding of general human resource concepts that may arise in non-HR roles.

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.

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.

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.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of inventory management and how to deliver your goods effectively and efficiently.

This course will help new supervisors learn how to lead their team, providing material and activities to develop skills in communication, coaching, and managing conflict, along with other relevant information.

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.

Promote healthy balance in a workplace by identifying and managing pressure points.

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 training course addresses the management of rights-of-way and access to inholdings in designated 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.

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 the natural resource management techniques relevant to air quality in wilderness.

This course discusses the decision-making process for planning natural resource restoration in a wilderness area. It is essential that managers consider impacts to the untrammeled and natural qualities of wilderness when contemplating restoration efforts within wilderness boundaries.

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 basics of fish and wildlife management in wilderness. The course covers guiding principles and includes case studies to demonstrate a variety of management options.

This course presents the legal foundation for managing natural resources in wilderness and addresses the myths and realities of wilderness management.

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

Preserving natural lightscapes is one of many management actions that helps protect cultural traditions, visitor experiences, and the physiological and ecological processes of wildlife in wilderness. This course will discuss the fundamentals of lightscape resource management, including threats to the night sky in wilderness and relevant principles of management.

This course discusses the importance of management and monitoring soil and water resources—inside and outside wilderness; the various laws relating to management; and identifies strategies for prevention, mitigation, and restoration of impacts on soil and water resources in wilderness.

Learn to differentiate between sounds and noises in wilderness soundscapes, identify threats to wilderness soundscapes, and examine strategies for soundscape management.

Learn the guidelines managers should follow in order to satisfy the requirements of the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and agency policies when managing threatened and endangered species in wilderness.

This training course addresses the management of rights-of-way and access to inholdings in designated wilderness.

This course is designed for facility managers and park and recreation providers who are interested in gaining a foundational knowledge of the requirements for accessible facilities within federal, state, and local agencies.

Explore how to make networking work for you!

This webinar explores the art and science of park design.

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.

Promote understanding of gap analysis and its use in improving processes in an organization, and developing the skills that you need to perform effective gap analyses.

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.

Gain understanding on how to effectively manage public relations and create comprehensive strategy regarding PR technique.

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.

In this course you will learn about why it is important to effectively communicate and how to communicate with participants and other stakeholders to provide information and promote your recreational sports leagues and tournaments.

In this course, you will learn the basics of facility management including selecting, preparing, and maintaining playing fields, courts, and other facilities for recreational sports use.

Learn about the basic elements of designing and scheduling sports leagues and various types of tournaments.

Provides an understanding of Risk Management, and develops a management framework that can be used for a single project, a department, or an entire organization.

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 learn about safety and health considerations on recreational sports, methods for mitigating and responding to potential problems, and strategies for reducing your agency's exposure to liability.

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.

This course will introduce you to the site planning process and how the steps of site planning contribute to a site master plan.

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.

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Learn about how to define change & change management and to identify strategies for helping change to be accepted and implemented in the workplace.

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.

Gain a basic understanding of mental health in the context parks and recreation and how to handle a mental health concern if it arises.

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

Explore important situations or concepts that public agency communicators are likely to encounter in their work.

Learn about the need for communicating with the public and how doing so impacts the success of your agency.

Obtain a background understanding of importance pertaining to the various communication tools available to and used by public agency communicators.

Learn the basic information you need to know before learning more about how to interact with the media.

Explore important situations or concepts that public agency communicators are likely to encounter in their work.

Explore the main elements of a communications plan, as well as how to create successful plans.

In this course, we will focus on how visual storytelling tools can help trainers have an impact in the classroom and beyond.

This previously recorded one-hour webinar examines the efforts of Michigan State Parks and Maryland Conservation Job Corps to program, manage, and integrate better the outdoor experience into urban residents’ lives.

Learn how to use technology to your advantage by effectively integrating technology into your processes and procedures.

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.

Learn about how wilderness character is defined, wilderness character qualities and what degrades these qualities. This course also discusses how to integrate wilderness character into planning, monitoring, management, operations, and more.

Explore the history, philosophy, and application of wilderness law and policy in the United States.This sixteen-week course of study provides a comprehensive understanding of the basics of management in designated wilderness areas.This Certificate is designed for seasonal Wilderness rangers, federal personnel working near or with an interest in Wilderness Stewardship.

This Certificate is designed for seasonal Wilderness rangers and federal personnel working near Wilderness or with an interest in Wilderness Stewardship.

Explore the history, philosophy, and application of wilderness law and policy in the United States.This twelve-week course of study provides a comprehensive understanding of the basics of management in designated wilderness areas.This Certificate is designed for seasonal Wilderness rangers, federal personnel working near or with an interest in Wilderness Stewardship.

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 July 2019, London became the globe’s first city to adopt the National Park City Charter and become the first National Park City. Join founder and urban recreation/conservation provocateur Daniel Raven-Ellison for a talk that explores the evolution of the movement, London’s path to adoption, and lessons learned in the first year of the program’s deployment in one of the world’s great urban centers. Participants will also get to speak with Jayne Miller from World Urban Parks to discuss ways their communities can be a part of this movement and possibly become one of the 25 National Park Cities across the globe by 2025.

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

Join us for A Free-Market Perspective – Urban Park Systems from Emerging Cities to Industrialized Legacy Metro Areas (The State of Our World's Cities) on September 24th, 2020 @ 10:00 AM EST (New York Time).

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

Discover innovative public space development, programming, design, and management from cities across North America and the world.

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.