Progress 06/01/23 to 05/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:During this reporting period, the target audience was teachers in the upper Midwest teaching agriculture or science including skilled and technical science educators. Teachers were contacted using a number or email list-serves. We held a fall workshop with a smaller-than-expected number of teachers. This led to changing the workshops to earlier in the summer for 2024. As of June 30, we have 23teachers signed up for the July 2024 workshop and anticipate it will fill at 25 teachers. We have also expanded our advertising to teachers across the Midwest. Changes/Problems:The largest challenge was getting enough teachers to the workshop. To meet this challenge we moved the workshop into the summer and advertised throughout the region earlier. We expanded our number of teachers to recruit for Cohorts 2 and 3 by the number we were not able to recruit in Year 1. This has allowed us to recruit up to 25 teachers for Cohorts 2 and 3. We were able to get 23 teachers registered for the Year 2 workshop. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Cohort 1 was smaller than anticipated and allowed teachers to have more personal contact with PIs over the course of the three-day workshop. In addition to the content delivered in the workshop, teachers were able to request and PIs and collaborators created additional instructional videos which were saved and will be used with future cohorts of teachers. Teachers lack training related to precision agriculture, microcontrollers, and electrical sensors used in modern agricultural production. By providing training in automation and coding, teachers will be better prepared to create learning experiences that mirror modern agricultural systems. A 3-day training workshop trained 11 teachers from 10 schools on the use of open-source microcontrollers, coding, sensors, and inquiry-based instruction. These 11 teachers incorporated this instruction through inquiry-based methodologies into 14 classes in 10 different school districts. Twelve refresher videos reviewing workshop content were created and hosted online for teacher access to reinforce the 3-days of training received at the workshop. Ten teacher-created and peer-reviewed lesson plans related to the automation of agricultural systems in the plant systems pathway were piloted in 14 classes with approximately 60 students. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Initial data collection is still under way and will be reported as it is analyzed in Year 2. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We have recruited for cohort two and have over the 20 teachers we initially planned to recruit. Recruitment for Year 2 will put our teacher numbers back on track for training a total of 60 teachers throughout the grant. Data collection from teachers and students is ongoing and will be continued with teachers from both the first two cohorts in Year 2. Cohort 2 teachers will develop additional lessons and will further refine the lessons created in Year 1.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Goal 1. Eleven teachers attended the first fall workshop. Each teacher took back six Arduino UNO-compatible sensor kits and a variety of related sensors and training aids developed by the PIs for use in this project. Teachers used open-source software and lessons created by participants and PIs for teaching about soil moisture sensors, LCD's, pumps, digital humidity, and temperature sensors and theirrelationship to increasing the efficiency of plant production systems. Goal 2. Teachers worked with PIs throughout the year to find and create innovative delivery methods for teaching about the use of microcontrollers in ag production. This led to the creation of a custom model barn that integrated the four sensors and two fans controlled by relays to model a production greenhouse. Gaol 3. Teachers and PIs worked collaboratively to create lesson plans for 10 days of instruction and to deliver the instruction to at least one class at each of their schools. Lessons utilized inquiry-based instruction to improve engagement with the content. Goal 4. Progress is ongoing. Data collection has occurred and will continue as future cohorts complete the workshops and deliver the content to students across the Midwest with a goal of having data andpublications from the data in Year 4.

Publications