2008 Concurrent Sessions

Student Attraction to and Hesitancy about Matriculating in an Undergraduate Forestry Degree Program in the U.S.

Terry L. Sharik et al. — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:30:00 PDT

Undergraduate enrollments in forestry degree programs have been dropping sharply since the mid 1990s, causing considerable concern on the part of academic institutions that offer these programs and entities that hire graduates in this field, especially in the light of projected increases in the demand for these graduates. Accordingly, in 2004 and 2007 we surveyed undergraduate student leaders in forestry from around the country to determine what attracted them to matriculate in a forestry degree program and conversely, what, if anything, may have made them hesitant to have done so. The overwhelming reason given for deciding to matriculate in forestry was a love of the outdoors/nature, while the predominant reasons for hesitancy over doing so was a perceived lack of jobs and low wages. These results suggest that today’s students are less idealistic and more market-driven than their counterparts in the late 1960s-early 1970s when student enrollments in forestry were at an all-time high. Such changes in student attitudes and perceptions may require educators to consider mechanisms for marketing their degree programs, and for employers to advertise more widely the availability of jobs and consider increasing salary levels.

Making Service-Learning Work for You

George Hess et al. — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:30:00 PDT

Consensus emerges about defining characteristics and transformative potential of service-learning. The challenge is to design effective service-learning experiences that nurture connections at the intersections of learning and service goals, disciplines, and institutional units. Individuals can attend any or all parts of this workshop; discussion will occur during each part. Part 1 (30 min): Overview of the pedagogy, its non-traditional nature, benefits, and challenges. Service-learning integrates learning and service goals; academic and civic learning; collaboration between campus and community; and structured reflection. Community partnerships and critical reflection are key elements of intentional design for maximum impact. Part 2 (60 minutes): Examples of service-learning in natural resources courses at NC State, from single-class activities to multi-course sequences. (1) We integrated service-learning into a three-course forest measurement sequence. A “one-shot” service-learning activity acclimates students to the approach during the first course; they advance to a semester-long service-learning project in the third course. (2) Natural Resources Measurements is built around a service-learning project. Students have worked with county government to estimate local trends in impervious surface levels, providing data used in drafting new storm water regulations. (3) We are assessing the ecological value of Raleigh’s forests with several partners during a three-semester process in which data and information are passed from one course to the next. Part 3 (90 minutes): Clinic to help faculty see how to incorporate service-learning effectively into their courses and curricula. Working in small, facilitated groups, participants will engage in focused discussion of service-learning possibilities for their courses. We will offer an instructional design process and support participants in applying it collaboratively to their situations. Participants will leave with concrete ideas and a list of resources. The session will be relevant to instructors new to and experienced with service-learning.

21st Century Fish and Wildlife Curricula

Bjorn Wolter et al. — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:30:00 PDT

Potential employers of fish and wildlife graduates are increasingly looking for well-rounded employees that can communicate effectively, work autonomously, and solve problems. A paradigm shift in curriculum development has been driven by these requirements and intensified by an entirely new type of student. Historically, students in the natural resources have been characterized as introverts; however, the new generation of students, termed “Millenials”, present a challenge to natural resource departments due to differences in sociability (McGlynn 2005), diversity (Broido 2004), and ethics (DeBard 2004). Academic changes are also impacting the ways in which students are taught (Aikenhead 2006), with an increasingly specialized professoriat and decreasing numbers of instructors who can teach a broad range of topics to undergraduates. The question then becomes: how can programs accommodate the demands of majors and graduate schools for specialization while providing well-rounded graduates sought by agencies and maintaining quality instructor for non-majors? We suggest updated fish and wildlife curricula that reflect these myriad demands, including quantitative competency, communications skills, problem-solving, organizational management, ethics and philosophy, human elements, fundamental science studies, the language of science, and experiential learning.

Students Use Leadership And Communications In Courses And With Agency Cooperators To Recommend Solutions For Natural Resources Problems Through Service Learning

Delwin E. Benson — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:00:00 PDT

Session #10: Collaboration and Experiential Learning. Presentation for 7th Biennial Conference on University Education in Natural Resources, March 13-15, 2008, Corvallis, Oregon. Featured in the ScholarsArchive@OSU in Oregon State University

Natural Resources Distance Learning Consortium

Gary R. Evans — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:30:00 PDT

This symposium consists of presentations and discussions looking to the future of natural resources distance learning concepts. Key issues that will be discussed include: faculty development, technology roles - from remote imaging transmitted to the classroom to iPod lecture series and field assignments, credit transfer among Consortium members, faculty recruitment, funding course development, and innovation in course delivery. The epicenter of discussion is meeting the needs of students currently employed who cannot afford time or cost to relocate at a university campus to complete graduate courses or degree programs, meeting needs of natural resource agencies (federal, state and local), and future roles of professional societies (professional licensing and certifications). Among the futures issues will be presentations on meeting the needs of the agencies with hybrid (on-line and in the field) courses, Blended Learning (using multiple media technologies to teach a single lesson), and the new role of the employee’s career development system, e.g. DoILearn (Department of the Interior) and AgLearn (Department of Agriculture). Presenters will introduce issues the Consortium faces such as, developing and maintaining active course listings, common structure to on-line course listings, “what our students want, and what our agency clients want!”, “academic credits from accredited institutions”; understanding Learning and Content Management Systems with focus on knowledge, skills and abilities, and linkages between extension faculty and faculty in graduate programs. Presenters also will focus on the contemporary issues of faculty recruitment and development, linkages between the Land Grant/McIntire-Stennis natural resource colleges to the State Colleges, and private sector venders contracting to Federal and State agencies. The NRDL Consortium Policies and Procedures (draft) will be introduced. Consortium members: Virginia Tech, Stephen F. Austin State University, North Carolina State University, University of Tennessee – Martin, Oregon State University, Penn State University, University of Idaho, University of Montana, and Northern Arizona University.

Library Course Assignment Pages : Helping Students with Research Skills

Margaret Mellinger et al. — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:30:00 PDT

Like all undergraduates, students in natural resource fields need guidance in locating information for research projects and papers. Students, unaware of the wealth of information in libraries, rely primarily on familiar Internet sources for their scholarly work, often to the dismay of their instructors. Librarians have long collaborated with faculty to help students approach and access library resources through in-person instruction, print guides to research, and online help pages. OSU Libraries developed Interactive Course Assignment (ICA) web pages to highlight library resources in a more attractive and useful way. ICA pages display the most relevant library resources for a particular class or research assignment on one web page. These are dynamic web pages that integrate Web 2.0 features, chat and RSS feeds, etc. with traditional library content, such as catalogs and article databases. Using these pages, students quickly target research tools and information to successfully complete their assignments. The fresh design of the ICA pages gives OSU librarians a product to showcase with faculty, and a way to start a conversation about how to help students improve their research skills and resulting research papers and projects. Librarians partner with faculty to promote the pages and encourage student use. Preliminary feedback from students and faculty indicates that both find the pages helpful. In this session we will discuss the benefits of course-specific web pages and show some of the OSU pages. We will focus on how librarians collaborate and interact with faculty to create the pages, how they can be used in online education, and how students react to and use the pages.

Comparison of Student Success in F2F Versus Online Soil Science Lab-based Courses

Ron Reuter — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:00:00 PDT

Traditional soil science courses, especially with a hands-on lab component, have been face-to-face events. CSS 205, Soils: Sustainable Ecosystems, an introductory soil course with a lab for non-majors, has been taught via online delivery for four years. Skeptics of online science lab classes abound. The question remains: how does an online course compare to an on-campus offering with respect to student learning? This study compares student learning results for an on-campus and an online version of the same course. Students in both modes were assessed for soils knowledge pre-course using identical tests; answers for the assessment were not released to the students. In each course, the same lecture notes and lab assignments were used. Soils samples were mailed to online students and also used by on-campus students to provide consistent comparisons between the courses. Assessment at the end of the term consisted of assessment questions from the pre-assessment, additional course-relevant questions, and hand-texturing using the known texture samples. Results indicate no significant difference in final student success between the online and on-campus students. However, the path taken to reach that learning level was significantly different between the two groups. The study reveals interesting learning differences between the online learners and the on-campus F2F learners. Overall, field and laboratory skills are learned by the online population and indicate that laboratory classes can be taught online effectively.

Oregon Forests : Pathways to K-12 Student Success

Norie Dimeo-Ediger et al. — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:00:00 PDT

This presentation will provide an overview of the conference, "Oregon Forests: Pathways to Student Success" and how it was used to bring natural resource partners and school district educators together to discuss the need to ensure the sustainability of forestry education in Oregon’s K-12 classrooms and to make forestry education plans for their school districts. Using this conference as the background, we will discuss how school administrators, teachers and forestry education providers established common goals, networked, strengthened partnerships and identified potential funding opportunities. This presentation will highlight place-based education models that enhance student performance with relevant, hands-on education experiences. In discussing this conference, we will share what we discovered about increasing forestry education in school districts statewide. This will include sharing success stories like that of Tillamook School District educators and community members who are using forestry/natural resources education to enhance learning in K-12 classrooms. This session will also cover details about the two-day conference and how five-member teams from school districts statewide are using forestry to meet district ESL, assessment and state standard needs and professional development models for teachers. We will discuss how community-based education, such as using local forests, can engage students and improve performance in key areas as reading, writing, math and science. We will share resource materials that we made available at no cost to schools to support forestry/natural resources education. Finally, we will share some of the plans developed by Oregon school districts who participated in the conference that will demonstrate how together we are creating pathways to student success.

Transferring Learning to Work : Making Learning Real for Natural Resource Leaders and Their Employers

William Ashton et al. — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 14:00:00 PDT

Investing in leadership development for natural resource professionals increasingly means linking learning for participants to performance for their employer. We were challenged to develop meaningful learning outcomes and their assessment, which included making the learning ‘real’ for the participants and their employer. Working collaboratively with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, we combined an outcomes-based approach with problem-based learning in an 8-day Ecological Sustainability Leadership Program for foresters, biologists, and other public service professionals. An important element of the curriculum was the transfer-to-work action plan. For participants, their plan results from reflection, discerning priorities, and making commitments to take action. From the employers view, their action plan encourages and promotes explicit transfer of learning outcomes to work. From an educator’s perspective, their plan allows assessment of the suitability of the learning outcomes and our success in helping participants acquire them. Our presentation provides an overview of this leadership program, key elements of curriculum design, along with assessment, giving particular attention to the transfer to work online tools.

First Stop Planning and Communication using Landhelp

Delwin E. Benson — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 14:30:00 PDT

A first stop Internet-based, storage, planning and communication system for professional and private users to manage lands, wildlife and people is branded “LandHelp” (www.LandHelp.info. LandHelp contains 31 broad categories of information which then link to approximately 3,000 more excellent resources that have been developed by other professionals or which have been placed in LandHelp via PDF files. Major topics include but are not limited to planning, water, forests, fire, range, fish and wildlife, livestock, rural community living, pests, emergencies, health and safety, recreation, tourism and value added enterprises, financial aid and programs, community assessment and management, education, green infrastructure and sustainability, and most recently leadership and “next child in the woods.” This “first-stop-resource” for understanding and managing land, wildlife and people has been used about 200,000 times in the past year without promotion by the university except through personal communications. LandHelp can be used by faculty, students, professionals, and all persons with access to the Internet; it encourages people to help themselves to information and to practice conservation and simplifies communications. The Internet is the most convenient, uniform and accessible place to house, edit and to share important information. However, persons also need a helping hand to put information into action through work by our agencies and organizations. The next step for LandHelp is to get natural resources agencies, organizations and individuals around the country to store information therein and to communicate with their publics through the shared website. LandHelp could become the common Internet voice for all Natural Resources agencies and organizations.