Faculty-led Inquiry into Reflective and Scholarly Teaching (FIRST)

 

Date of this Version

2021

Document Type

Portfolio

Citation

Sindelar, Meghan. "AGRO 366: Soil Nutrient Relationships — A Peer Review of Teaching Benchmark Portfolio" (2021). UNL Faculty Portfolios, 176. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/prtunl/176/

Abstract

Soil Nutrient Relationships serves juniors and seniors with a major or minor in Agronomy. I originally cotaught this course with another professor and was in charge of just the lab portion. Now that I am the sole instructor I had goals of developing new content learning resources and better integrating lab and lecture content. The course was reorganized in 2021 into weekly modules with independent learning, lab time to work on calculations, using NebGuides, and other skill content, and then end of week discussion for relevant case studies or discussion of application and interactions. Students also conducted a group project outside of class time as a performance task activity. One new assessment group was developed in 2021 to test that students could independently do lab skills and to practice developing nutrient management plans on a smaller scale than the performance task activity. Students responded to course surveys that they had gained knowledge in all learning objectives and that the lab activities helped them complete the unit wrap-up assignments and group project. Changing lab meetings to a time to emphasize using the content, and developing assessments where students independently used content increased learning and the new model will be used again. There were further adjustments to the course as a result of COVID but I am looking forward to increasing the amount of time spent with students on face-to-face learning in the future.

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