Online Course Development with University Extension and Industry Experts

Authors

Kelsey L. McCullough, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

First Advisor

Donald Lee

Second Advisor

David Lambe

Committee Members

Donald Lee, David Lambe, Amanda Easterly

Date of this Version

8-2024

Document Type

Project

Comments

Copyright 2024, Kelsey L. McCullough. Used by permission

Abstract

Project Background

While pursuing my college degrees, the highest impact classes have been filled with applications that I understood as being relevant at the time and have used within my career, had hands-on experiences, and included influential interactions with professionals. Taking this idea forward to course development as an online instructor, I know that creating and adapting college classes to be centered on key aspects of the agricultural industry will add to the education quality of the program and the college experience. This paper will describe my first attempt at this model of partnering with academic and industry experts to help teach students about professionally relevant subjects. The professionals told the story of their work, and I designed the course material to dive into the science, data, and application.

I chose the online course delivery option for several reasons. First, I am an online, distance student and instructor, so being on campus to lecture or have in-person lab/recitations every week was not feasible. I have years of experience in online course delivery. The online format provides our student audience flexibility, accessibility, and convenience. Online classes are in high demand for students and the tools to offer a quality education experience can nearly match the in-person atmosphere and interaction. Finally, online courses allow instructors to be resource-efficient with development and delivery.

Creating a new online undergraduate course was a great fit for my MAS Option B degree project as it has been a strong representation of my professional work and has helped me carve out a spot for my teaching work at the University.

Conclusions

This MAS project has been a great learning experience as a student, instructor, and agriculturalist. My family’s farm takes pride in thinking holistically about its operation - diversifying endeavors and considering long term impacts of decisions. This course development has allowed me to do the same thing in an academic setting. Helping put together a course, starting at the idea phase, has given me a comprehensive view of everything necessary to design and deliver a new class. This includes making sure there is demand for the class by talking with advisors of the target student audience, collaborating with other faculty to find a niche subject that isn’t explored in other classes already, creating content and meaningful assessment opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding, critical thinking, and applications, and forming evaluations to measure the overall learning experience. This project has heightened my passion for being a life-long learner.

There are many thanks to deliver for support in completing this project: my family, advisors, teaching teams, Agronomy and Horticulture Department, Engler Entrepreneurship Program, professors/instructors, and students.