Innovations in Pedagogy, Use of Technology

Engaging Students in Sustainability Using Web 2.0

R. Bruce Hull et al. — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:30:00 PDT

The challenges of the 21st century require an engaged citizenry. Universities must equip students to engage diverse points of view, engage mounting sources of information, engage pressure points and decision makers, and, perhaps most importantly, engage themselves through introspection and reflection to develop their own positions. We developed a class to help students engage sustainability. Sustainability is both engaging and polarizing. It invites people to participate in constructing a future in which they want to live. It also exposes explosive fault lines that drive people into combative positions defending cherished and unquestioned beliefs about God, what it means to be human, what are just rewards for a life well lived, and who deserves access to those rewards. Questioning sustainability requires questioning our lifestyles, our relationships to others now and in the future, our relationship to nature, and the role of science and professional advice in making decisions. Resolving these wicked problems requires engaging in tense and conflict‐filled situations that most people, especially natural resource professionals, avoid. It is easier to focus on simpler, solvable, technical tasks, such as the measurement of resource conditions, the control of ecological systems, and the optimization of harvest schedules. But engaged citizens and professionals need to do more than memorize sanctioned facts, apply tested techniques, and parrot popular sound bites. They need to engage in a learning process and engage in efforts to define and solve natural resource challenges. We developed a class designed to help students engage in solving controversial environmental dilemmas. It is a large‐enrolment course (140 students) taught every semester servicing most majors at Virginia Tech, not just natural resource students. The course requires students to develop, present, and defend positions on controversial topics ranging from climate change and mountain top removal to clear‐cutting, hunting and restricting property rights with land use controls. Engagement is facilitated through reflective essays, teamwork, research writing, oral presentations, and “town hall” sessions. The course was recently revised using Web 2.0 technologies that encourage digital interaction so that class size could be increased while maintaining opportunities for students to present, test, defend, and develop positions. These technologies include blogs, student‐produced videos, wikis, twitter, etc. The conference presentation will provide an overview of the course content, mechanisms of facilitating engagement, an assessment of the role of Web 2.0 technology in the class, and a summary of student knowledge gains and views of technology in the classroom. Additionally, we will discuss the challenges that arose with the integration of these Web 2.0 tools and share concrete examples of course materials and final student projects.

Use of Classroom Response Systems for Formative Assessment

Brent D. Bibles — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:00:00 PDT

Classroom response systems, aka clickers, are documented to increase student engagement and participation during class. Although they have many uses, I have found clickers are particularly useful for encouraging student discussion and for formative assessment of student understanding. Use of clickers allows the instructor to practice agile teaching in ways that are not possible without this technology. Clickers enable the instructor to rapidly gauge student understanding of the class topic, and rapidly move discussion to points where students are having trouble. They also enable instructors to probe for common misconceptions about concepts, stimulate discussion concerning these misconceptions, and stimulate critical thinking in students in the process. However, there are several aspects that instructors must consider while using clickers to conduct formative assessment and agile teaching. I will discuss several of these considerations, including question design, based on my classroom experiences using clickers.

Integration of Tablet PC Technology in an Undergraduate Forestry Curriculum

Eddie Bevilacqua — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:30:00 PDT

For many natural resource disciplines, fieldwork and data gathering are the first‐steps in the scientific process. Integration of Tablet PC technology in field labs served to facilitative data collection and analysis, increasing undergraduate student interest, engagement and success. This presentation will describe some of the successful (and not so successful) implementation strategies of tablet technology in forestry courses. With the help of a HP Technology for Teaching grant, existing field and computer labs were redesigned to include the use of tablets for data collection and analysis using spreadsheet software. The tablets provided students with the capacity to compile, visualize and interpret data in real‐time, as well as facilitate the sharing of data across groups. In addition, lectures were redesigned to allow students to interact with classroom materials using tablets as if they were using pencil and paper, providing students with exact annotations for future reference. The technology also allowed instructors to gather real time feedback from students, process the responses and display the results back to the class. Results from student evaluations showed that the vast majority of the students felt the technology improved their field data collection and analysis, and increased their comprehension of the material, while 70% agreed or strongly agreed to using the technology in other courses, if available.