A team from the South Slough reserve modified their collaborative approach as a result of end user preferences in their project, Bringing the “Oly” Oyster Back to Oregon’s Coast.

Bringing the "Oly" Oyster Back to Oregon's Coast

Understanding end users’ preferences and capacity to engage is critical to a successful collaboration. Originally, this project team had planned to use a structured decision-making process to collaborate with end users. However, the majority of end users indicated that they were reluctant to engage in a group learning process and that structured group meetings were not their preferred method of interacting with the team. They were more interested in the specific outcomes of the project’s research, rather than in the learning process to arrive at those outcomes.