Source: OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY submitted to NRP
CREATING CURRICULUM TO INSTILL A RESEARCH SKILLSET IN AGRICULTURAL COMMUNICATION UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
ACTIVE
Funding Source
OTHER GRANTS
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1031621
Grant No.
2024-70003-41448
Cumulative Award Amt.
$296,053.00
Proposal No.
2023-05263
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Jan 1, 2024
Project End Date
Dec 31, 2026
Grant Year
2024
Program Code
[ER]- Higher Ed Challenge
Recipient Organization
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
1680 MADISON AVENUE
WOOSTER,OH 44691
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
A research skillset provides students with increased understanding, confidence, and awareness to utilize in their future workplace.Undergraduate research initiatives are common in many colleges of agriculture; however, the social sciences, including agricultural communication programs, often lack strong engagement and participation. There is a need to develop undergraduate curriculum and programs focused on the intricacies of social science research and communicating research to lay audiences.Scholars have identified the need for and importance of undergraduate research skills in agricultural communication (Leal et al., 2020; Lawson et al., 2020) but the focus on undergraduate research course offerings and opportunities have been limited for students with interest in agricultural communication (Cannon et al., 2016). This need for agricultural communication research skills coupled with current limited resources and platforms to address this need creates an opportunity to develop an inquiry-based curriculum that will enable students in a variety of majors to investigate and interpret social science data. Fulfilling this undergraduate research need will also address stakeholder needs by offering research-based solutions to communicating FAS issues while also providing a better equipped workforce.To address this need, we willCreate undergraduate curriculum for conducting valid and reliable social science research for students with an interest in agricultural communication, collaborate with industry and interdisciplinary partners to address pressing issues by determining research questions and objectives, provide opportunities for students to practice and refine research skills to meet the needs and demands of future employers, and develop an undergraduate research kit with resources and tools for faculty and graduate students in agricultural communication to use at their universities.The impacts of this project will improve the quality of undergraduate education in agricultural communication by addressing an established need for current students and future employees, as well as industry and interdisciplinary leaders, who seek professional, rigorous, and reliable answers to their research questions in the social sciences, and ultimately be informed advocates for the FAS industries. This program will also strengthen institutional capacities in terms of curriculum, faculty, instructional delivery, and student recruitment and retention in response to identified needs. The creation of undergraduate research curriculum and cohort will provide a mechanism to teach and apply social science research skills to students.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
50%
Developmental
0%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
90360103030100%
Knowledge Area
903 - Communication, Education, and Information Delivery;

Subject Of Investigation
6010 - Individuals;

Field Of Science
3030 - Information and communication;
Goals / Objectives
The first goal of the program is to strengthen institutional capacities in terms of curriculum, faculty, instructional delivery, and student recruitment and retention in response to identified needs. The creation of undergraduate research curriculum and cohort will provide a mechanism to teach and apply social science research skills to students. Curriculum will be created and disseminated to faculty at other universities throughout the U.S.through the creation and dissemination of an online undergraduate research toolkit. This dissemination seeks to provide educational resources to inform and support undergraduate agricultural communication efforts.Second,a goal of this project is to attract and support undergraduate and graduate students to participate in cutting-edge research techniques in social science. The goal is to educate students on how to conduct research that informs communication techniques and strategies in the program's needs areas of FAS, and community and business development. The Project Directors (PDs) have received support from industry and multidisciplinary partners who will help to identify potential research topics and problems the undergraduate researchers will address.Finally, the partnership between TTU and OSU fulfils the grant program's goal to facilitate cooperative initiatives between institutions, and the industry partnerships provide for cooperation between university and private sector businesses. These two universities are unique in their geographic locations, and in their connections to industry and interdisciplinary partners. Ultimately, a final goal of this project is to enhance the quality of instruction for undergraduate and graduate degrees to help meet current and future workforce needs.The overall goal of the project is to develop students' analytical, interpersonal, leadership, communication, problem-solving, computational, and decision-making skills and abilities by equipping them with a skillset in research. To accomplish this goal, we will create, test, and distribute curriculum designed for agricultural communication faculty to use in teaching undergraduate research skills and competencies. This will also enhance faculty development in terms of teaching competency and subject matter expertise in an area that is challenging to students.
Project Methods
Planof Operation and Methodology:This project aims to implement a Multistate Integrated Undergraduate Research Program focused on connecting and training undergraduate students to conduct research focused on communicating about issues in FAS. The focus of this program is to develop new and improved curricula and materials and exemplarily education models focused on training agricultural communication undergraduate students how to conduct social science research on how to better communicate about FAS issues. This type of curriculum aims to develop students' analytical, interpersonal, leadership, communication, problem-solving, computational, and decision-making skills and abilities by equipping them with a skillset in research.OBJ 1: Create curriculum to teach undergraduates in agricultural communication how to conduct valid and reliable research.In the first phase of the project, we will create the undergraduate research curriculum to disseminate in a new undergraduate research course at OSU and TTU. This type of curriculum will differ from traditional graduate curriculum on research methods as it is more applied, focusing on the problems addressed by industry and interdisciplinary partners (see objective 2), and it will focus on the faculty instructor mentoring students on how to use research to assist industry-based organizations and interdisciplinary partners to better communicate with their key audiences. This proposed curriculum will introduce students to traditional research methods in social science, such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, and survey methods, and introduce concepts of novel communication research techniques such as continuous response measurement and eye tracking. We propose the overarching curriculum objectives will be the following: 1) to understand and explain the fundamental concepts of social science research, 2) to understand and describe the scientific procedures associated with each method, 3) identify how the scientific procedure may be applied to industry-based issues, and 4) apply the appropriate research method to conduct an agricultural communication-based research project supporting needs of the FASindustries. To create an engaged learning experience, the proposed curriculum will include a multitude of techniques such as handouts, guest webinars, podcasts, and case studies. In this phase, we also begin conversations with industry and interdisciplinary partners.This curriculum development will leverage the strengths of the PDs at OSU and TTU. The PDs are past collaborators, and each of the PDs have mentored undergraduate and graduate students. Their expertise in various techniques in communication research will enhance the development of the curriculum for this project.OBJ 2:Collaborate with industry and interdisciplinary partners toaddress pressing issues by determining research questions and objectives.A novel aspect of this proposal is the collaboration with industry and interdisciplinary partners to solve pressing communication problems. FAS researchers and industry partners are continuously seeking out partnerships on how to better the communication of their science and efforts (see letters of support). This proposal seeks to provide experiential learning education for undergraduate students by making connections with industry organizations and benchmark science faculty colleagues to form interdisciplinary research groups. The research conducted by the undergraduate students will be informed by insights provided by these partners. In the first phase, we will identify partners and the types of communication problems they would like to solve.OBJ 3:Provide opportunities for students to practice and refine research skills to meet theneeds and demands of future employers.The project team will fulfil objective 3 through the dissemination and revision of the curriculum at OSU and TTU. Dissemination will occur through our two-semester long undergraduate research program at each institution.In the first semester, students will complete the undergraduate research course, focused on understanding methods and techniques described in Objective 1 and 2. By the end of the semester, student groups will be tasked with developing a research proposal and instrument to collect data in the following semester. The second course will be focused on continued application of their research methods course through hands-on application and experiential learning. Student groups will collect data, analyze data, report results, and present their work to a partnering industry organization or interdisciplinary partners. Student groups will also be expected to develop a 2-page poster abstract for a research conference and present their findings to industry and interdisciplinary partners. The first cohort will serve as a launch-point for improving the developed undergraduate research curriculum.OBJ 4: Develop an undergraduate research kit with resources and tools for faculty and graduate students in agricultural communication to use at their universities:Faculty support and understanding of undergraduate researchers' needs are essential to the success of an undergraduate researcher (Hunter et al., 2007). To address this need, we aim to develop an online undergraduate researcher mentorship toolkit, developed by the PDs who have prior experience developing websites and teaching web design, to be disseminated to faculty mentors. Based on the needed revisions from student evaluations (Objective 3) and the curriculum proposed above, we will develop a website that houses the Undergraduate Research toolkit. These resources will include fact sheets and handouts such as examples of course syllabi, expectation fact sheets, undergraduate research agreements, onboarding principles, and best practices for writing and communicating research. In addition, we will create and place curriculum videos (i.e., introduction to survey methods in agricultural communication) on the website. Also, during this phase, we will host "train the trainer" events with plans to conduct trainings for educators throughout the life of the grant. Training will occur through a series of webinars and professional development opportunities. We will submit workshops at state, regional, and national education conferences with the goal of training faculty to mentor undergraduate researchers. Further, the project will be disseminated through promotional mailers to agricultural communication program nationwide (see dissemination plan section).

Progress 01/01/24 to 12/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:Two of the four target audiences were reached during this reporting period, as outlined in the project timeline and plan. The first audience wasgraduate student mentors, and the second wasindustry and interdisciplinary partners. Throughout the summer of 2024, the researchers talked with and interviewed 10 industry and interdisciplinary partners to learn their perceptions of social science research and to determine problems in need of exploration. In the fall, we continued our work with the industry and interdisciplinary partners as we made plans for the spring cohort. We worked with this audience to refine and check their research needs and also invited them to participate with the spring cohort. Graduate students were onboarded for the project in the fall and quickly became a key part of the team. The main responsibilities graduate students led in the fall were analyzing data from summer interviews with industry and interdisciplinary partners, creating recruitment materials for the upcoming spring undergraduate research cohort, and helping to recruit undergraduate researchers to engage with the project. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Goal 1 -Strengthen institutional capacities in terms of curriculum, faculty, instructional delivery, and student recruitment and retention in response to identified needs. During the next reporting period, we will be testing the curriculum with undergraduate student researchers at Texas Tech University and Ohio State University. Results from this cohort experience will greatly impact the overall goal of this project as we will have results of effectiveness and opportunities to made needed modifications. The next step will be creating an online toolkit with the curriculum and preparing it for review by other faculty members in agricultural communication. Additionally, we plan toshare results with our industry and interdisciplinary stakeholders and present some of our findings at conferences. We also hope to achieve one to two journal publications. Goal 2 -Attract and support undergraduate and graduate students to participate in cutting-edge research techniques in social science. In the next reporting period, the undergraduates recruited in reporting period one will engage with each other in a variety of research projects that were previously identified by industry and interdisciplinary partners. Working through these research problems will enable the undergraduate students to participate in cutting-edge social science research techniques. At the same time, the graduate students engaged in this project will assist with the undergraduate research cohort and prepare some of our findings for dissemination. Goal 3 -Facilitate cooperative initiatives between institutions, and the industry partnerships provide for cooperation between university and private sector businesses. We look forward to sharing our findings with other universities, and our industry and interdisciplinary partners at meetings and conferences.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Goal 1 -Strengthen institutional capacities in terms of curriculum, faculty, instructional delivery, and student recruitment and retention in response to identified needs. The most significant accomplishment toward this goal was engaging and identifying needs from industry and interdisciplinary stakeholders. The support for the project by this audience was transformed into action and measurable efforts. Together, the 10 interdisciplinary and industry stakeholders identified nearly 30 defined and justifiable research problems.These problems helped to inform the curriculum and projects for students in the 2025 undergraduate cohort. Additionally, the industry and interdisciplinary partners provided the research team an understanding of perceptions of and needs for social science research. Having these understandings directly impacts goal one, which is to strengthen institutional capacities in terms of curriculum, faculty, instructional delivery, and student recruitment and retention. Goal 2 -Attract and support undergraduate and graduate students to participate in cutting-edge research techniques in social science In year one, the researchers at Ohio State University and Texas Tech University implemented a comprehensive recruitment plan to attract undergraduate students to participate in a cohort to learn about social science research techniques. Specifically, the researchers sought students interested in graduate schools, careers in agriculture, and those interested in learning more about social science research. The recruitment materials were shared via various channels at both universities in an effort to reach every undergraduate in both Ohio State's College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, and the Texas Tech Davis College of Agricultural Sciences. Goal 3 -Facilitate cooperative initiatives between institutions, and the industry partnerships provide for cooperation between university and private sector businesses Throughout year one of this project the researchers at Ohio State University and Texas Tech University have worked collaboratively to address perspectives and needs of two unique geographic locations and differing industry and interdisciplinary partners. We are pleased with our progress toward these goals and look forward to more accomplishments in year two.

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Under Review Year Published: 2025 Citation: Volk, N., Lawson, C., Fischer, L. M., & Rumble, J.N. (In review). Developing Undergraduate Researchers for Enhanced Workforce Readiness. [Conference oral abstract]. North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture Annual Conference, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Under Review Year Published: 2025 Citation: Owen, J., Gustin, H., Fischer, L. M., Lawson, C., & Rumble, J.N. (In review). Navigating Undergraduate Research Perspectives: An Exploration of Undergraduate Researchers Motivations and Barriers toward Pursuing Research. [Conference oral abstract]. North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture Annual Conference, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.