Student engagement involves complex and multidimensional processes. The behavioral and psychological components of student engagement can help to explain student success and to understand and improve student learning outcomes ( Finn and Zimmer, 2012
Chat rooms and their use in everyday life are becoming increasingly common, and the technology may be a useful tool to link students with experts of a given subject material and each other. In our shared course Plant Nutrition and Nutrient Management, we experimented with using a chat room to link students with experts in the field of plant nutrition. Our main goal was to enhance the learning experience of the students by providing them with access to national and international plant nutrition researchers. Web CT was used to create and conduct the chat rooms and a chat etiquette evolved to prevent crosstalk and control the flow of the discussions. Positive outcomes of the chat room use included exposure of students to the technology and beneficial interaction between students and experts. Negative aspects of chat room use included the time involved to coordinate the overall effort and train experts to use the technology; the slow pace of some chats; effective grading; and the superficial coverage of some topics. We are developing modifications for future sessions to allow subjects to be explored in more depth and to improve networking between students and experts.
This study compared student learning outcomes of two teaching methodologies: a summary lecture and an asynchronous web-based method that included a case study (www.hightunnels.org/planningcasestudy.htm) followed by an all-class discussion. Twenty-one students taking an upper-level undergraduate course in greenhouse management were randomly split into two groups. Each group experienced both methodologies with presentations designed to provide complimentary information about site planning for protected environment structures; however, the order in which the groups received the methods was reversed. After each presentation, the participants were given an identical quiz (Time 1 and Time 2) comprised of questions that assessed knowledge gained, higher-order learning, and their perception of how confident they would be in solving actual site planning scenarios. Though quiz scores were not different between the two groups after Time 1 or 2, overall quiz scores improved after Time 2 for both groups combined (P = 0.03). When questions were categorized as lower-order vs. higher-order learning, a greater increase in scores was observed in higher-order learning (P = 0.12 vs. P = 0.04, respectively). Although students' perceived confidence was not influenced by which method was received first (P = 0.23), their confidence increased after Time 2 compared to Time 1 (P = 0.07). Rather than one teaching method being superior to the other, this study suggests that it is beneficial to use both. Interestingly, while students overwhelmingly preferred to receive the summary lecture before the web-based method, there was no significant difference in test scores between the two orders, suggesting that neither order offered any advantage.
At the University of Georgia, HORT 3020 (Introduction to Fruit Crops) is a two-credit survey of the botanical characteristics, taxonomy, and production practices of the world's major fruit crops. It is offered via traditional classroom instruction, and as a distance education (DE) course through the University System of Georgia Independent Study program. The DE version of the course is designed to be identical in content, final exam, and grading scale. However, due to the nature of independent study, the end-of-topic evaluations are open-book, written assignments in the DE course, whereas students in the classroom version have closed-book quizzes at the end of each topic. Student performance in the two versions of the course was compared over a 3-year period (May 1998 to May 2001) by analyzing scores on end-of-topic evaluations, final exams, and overall course grades. Students in the DE version had higher scores on end-of-topic evaluations in all 3 years, higher scores on a comprehensive final exam in 2 of 3 years, and consequently higher overall course grades than classroom students in all 3 years. Better performance of DE over classroom students may have been related to 1) qualitative differences in end-of-topic evaluations (written assignments versus quizzes), 2) differences in student demographics (nontraditional students in DE, traditional undergraduates in classroom), 3) the elective (DE) versus required (classroom) nature of the courses, or 4) differences in course duration (1 year for DE, 15 weeks for classroom). Equal or better performance of DE students suggests that survey courses such as Introduction to Fruit Crops can be offered via distance education without compromising learning outcomes.
learning outcomes ( Cone, 2009 ) and to provide an opportunity for students to learn how to apply and/or convey their academic knowledge within the community. One part of the academic aspect of service-learning is the element of reflection, including
understanding and effective communication are important outcomes of problem-based learning ( Duch, 1996 ). Laboratory sessions. Students complete 15 laboratory sessions. The first two sessions focus on identification and the proper terminology for vegetative and
definition of service learning involves the incorporation of community service into a course as a requirement for credit or graduation ( Dictionary.com, 2010 ). Students participate in “real life” and often hands-on activities in a course to meet the
learning course content through an interactive method, as opposed to memorizing content based on photos and lecture materials. One potential challenge is that technological skills vary among students. Thus, having clear directions and easy access is
course as compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Associations were assessed using the nonparametric measure of association, Kendall’s tau-b. Results and discussion Student-learning outcomes. The number of student responses in individual laboratory
, timing might have increased student interest in the activity. Previous research found topic interest influenced learning outcomes ( Schiefele and Krapp, 1996 ) and student experience ( Schiefele, 1996 ). Student sentiments can be informative when