Hear from Agriculture Prof. Mike Kaller

Transcript

So for formal activities in my communication-intensive courses, there's some writing activities that we do, but I think to me, the two the two signature activities are the things I would, I think, make my courses different for students is—in the human dimensions and natural resources course—they use qualitative survey software to to develop survey instrument and administer the instrument to other students within the class. Even though it's not realistic data, to gather some data and go through the experience of analyzing the data and then building a web page based on that and those data, really shows they have to think through every action that you take and critically assess—is this measurement I'm going to take—in this case it's measurement of of norms attitudes, but these could also be measurements that they apply in their across their discipline, whether they're measuring a tree or counting animal tracks—thinking about those measurements deliberately. What is the purpose of this measurement? What i'm going to do with this measurement? What is this measurement going to allow me to analyze? What am I going to convey about that? By using this example through class—this semester long project where we using the software and developing the webpage—kind of shows them breaks it outside the box at these aren't just activities occur in the swamp or in the forest, but these are activities that occur throughout their discipline and other disciplines. This idea of being deliberate and thoughtful, and thinking about what you're communicating at each step. You know, when you administer a survey to the public, or to your sample frame of whatever type, the choice of items in your instrument and how your instrument is organized actually sends a message, as well. So it gets them thinking about that as well, in addition to thinking about you know just doing the project. The other one, I think that is particularly helpful for them is the idea of curating the insect collection. Curating an insect collection is a hallmark of entomology courses; most entomology courses do this. But actually thinking about that process of what goes on the label—How do you convey to future researchers where was this found, what were the conditions, what were you doing when you found it. That can be important information for people looking at using these data later for research purposes. And connecting this seemingly mundane activity to a bigger picture is something that I was not able to do until I built it into a communication process and explained the points, the purpose, and the value of a property curated specimen and the entire curation process. And I think they gain a lot out of it. In terms of learning about being deliberate about how one chooses to record and communicate into the future audiences that might see your vision your activities.