Recipient Organization
MICHIGAN STATE UNIV
(N/A)
EAST LANSING,MI 48824
Performing Department
FORESTRY
Non Technical Summary
This application proposes to develop a series of VR-based natural resources education learning modules aimed at increasing forest literacy and improving career pathways opportunities for grade 9-12 students. The impact of these modules, if successful, will address both short- and long-term issues facing the natural resource community. Initially, the project will help decrease the growing disconnect between young people and the outdoors. Long-term, the benefits of engaging students in immersive forestry education learning environments will improve forest literacy. The strengths of the application are the dramatically improved and more easily accessible virtual learning platforms in addition to the critical need to maintain a skilled forestry workforce in the coming years. The project will first develop partnerships with statewide secondary educators to determine the scale of potential product users as well as specific areas of curriculum focus. The project will then develop and distribute an initial set of learning modules for classroom implementation. Finally, a collaborative working group of field professionals and educators will gather, analyze, and interpret evidence to determine how well module performance matched expectations and standards; and using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve future offerings. Overall, the goal is to provide educational tools supporting secondary educators to engage students with forests more readily so that they can appreciate the importance of forests, understand concepts related to forests and communicate about forests in a meaningful way, and make informed and responsible decisions about forest resources
Animal Health Component
25%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
25%
Developmental
75%
Goals / Objectives
Overall, we expect this program to result in several transformations in Food, Agricultural, Natural Resources and Human (FANH) sciences education through five target objectives:Co-develop and assess interactive VR learning modules with high school educators and forestry professionals.Expand natural resource-based education and career pathways to underserved rural and urban communities.Increase the numbers of high school students pursuing forestry career pathways.Broaden student interest and literacy in natural resources science and management.Build a template for expansion to a fully immersive basics of forestry curriculum.More specifically, our project goals are as follows:Target Goal 1: Creating a new curriculum. Implementation Fidelity Assessment (IFA) will be used to assess the quality of the curriculum developed. By interviewing participants of the curriculum creation team (PDs, secondary educators, forestry stakeholders), we can assess adherence and quality. Queries include factors such as were timelines met, relative participant contribution, partner representation, partner recruitment strategy, did the curriculum successfully meet learning objectives. We will also assess curriculum quality using an external review panel of foresters and forestry educators. Characteristics such as clarity, organization, engagement, appropriate delivery, and materials will inform the review. Changes in student learning will be measured through pre- and post- survey and interviews with students.Target Goal 2: Expand natural-resource based education in urban and rural communities through relationship-building, recruitment, and experiential learning opportunities. By interviewing participants who were involved in the creation of experiential education activities, surveying student participants, and analyzing recruitment numbers and trends reported by recruiters, we can better determine if the grant activities successfully expanded into its target communities. IFA results will be shared with the PDs to make any changes to foster the expansion of natural resources in intended communities.Target Goal 3: Increase the numbers of high school students pursuing pathways to forestry workforce careers. All goals are met by specific program activities, except Target Goal 3. The number of high school students pursuing forestry career pathways is a distal outcome and results in the successful implementation of other goals. If grant activities are successfully reaching target communities, we hypothesize an upward trend in the number of students representing these communities participating in the DOF's undergraduate program. We will report the number and demographics of the students at the end of each academic year.Target Goal 4: Broadening student interest and literacy in natural resources management through IVTs. We will employ ripple effects mapping to evaluate this goal (Chazdon et al. 2017). We will host focus groups with educators to determine how well they were able to integrate the developed IVTs into existing courses and if IVTs were appropriately engaging and disseminating learning material. We will distribute a short survey to assess adherence, quality, and learning outcomes to external partners for additional feedback, and they will be invited to focus group sessions for ripple effects mapping.Target Goal 5: Disseminate findings at conferences, publications, and community outreach events. We will collect project metadata through a reporting form administered to all PDs, stakeholders, and participants. The evaluator will work with the PDs to synthesize the results of all the evaluation efforts so that they are better able to create a template that expands their model. Expanding the funding and curriculum model for other IVTs is a long-term goal of the grant and one that will likely happen towards the end of the grant cycle. The evaluator will work with PDs to develop impact questions for a follow-up survey distributed to adopters of the model. All templates and evaluation reports will be distributed through the National Association of Undergraduate Forestry Resource Programs (NAUFRP).
Project Methods
Phase 1. Collaboration and establishing curriculum advisory committee. The project team will create a total of at least five (5) interactive virtual tours (IVTs) ranging geographically and educationally while emphasizing core forestry principles including forest health, silviculture, harvesting, wildlife, and non-timber forest products. To ensure relevant topics and effective learning outcomes for each IVT, the project team will collaborate with the MI FFA to form a curriculum advisory committee. The initial step is to assess the potential reach for our proposed curriculum beyond traditional avenues. The committee will organize the learning modules, review module content, and assist with dissemination across the state. The committee will include two rural and two urban secondary educators, one MSU Forestry Extension Agent, and two forestry stakeholders, and be overseen by PD Saralecos. The committee will meet on a triannual basis to address the following: 1) determine IVT topics; 2) review first draft of IVTs; 3) approve final version of IVTs; and 4) dissemination and promotion of IVTs statewide to educators.Phase 2. Creating and sharing IVT modules. Each module will be designed by the curriculum advisory committee with data collected by DOF. DOF will oversee multimedia development (IVT scans, videos, graphics, etc.) with support from the FCCP and produce finished products for public review prior to publishing each of the learning modules. Once the initial imagery and field measurements are completed, additional materials will be created and integrated within each virtual tour by the FCCP. This will create a more complete IVT with embedded videos, links to websites, downloadable materials, and textual descriptions. Curriculum will be developed to further support IVT application in a variety of forestry and environmental science courses. The team plans for IVT learning module development to follow a one-year cycle. Each summer/fall, throughout the life of the grant, the team will conduct multiple site visits of various forest locations to collect the necessary imagery. Each winter/spring, the project team will create supporting multimedia (e.g., videos, infographics, audio, etc.) and share the completed modules for review amongst MI FFA members. The materials developed in the fall and spring semesters will be evaluated and refined during the summer months to ensure classroom integration in the following fall semester. This pattern will be repeated each year to develop the IVT learning modules. All developed resources will be available at no cost on a publicly available website.Phase 3. Training educators to incorporate modules into existing curriculum. To facilitate dissemination and implementation of the IVTs the project team will deliver workshops training sessions annually at statewide professional development conferences for agriscience and STEM educators. The training will outline effective means of incorporating the IVTs into existing grade 9-12 curriculum and how educators can evaluate student engagement with the IVTs. The training sessions will be hosted at the MI FFA and MAAE annual professional developments meetings which combine to support over 150 educators from across the state annually. Furthermore, we will partner with the AFNRE training program to support preservice educators incorporating IVT learning modules into their student teaching curriculum. This collaborative process will provide a powerful educational tool for preservice teachers to take with them during their student teaching assignments and outfit the next generation of science educators with innovative learning materials. The AFNRE program has doubled in size over the past 8 years and is graduating ~50 students per year in the sciences. These combined efforts will allow us to reach our desired target of integrating our IVT's into 100 classrooms over two years. The final outreach and training focus will support urban secondary schools where MI FFA and MAAE programs are less common. The PD team has support (see Collaborative Arrangement - 2, 8 Support Letters) from the Michigan Project Learning Tree (PLT) environmental education program to attend their annual professional development sessions and host IVT trainings. Since its beginning in 1976, educators across Michigan have used PLT to teach about the natural and built environment, covering topics including forests, wildlife, water, air, energy, waste, climate change, invasive species, community planning and culture. The materials are multi-disciplinary and aligned with state and national education standards. Each year several hundred teachers and educators attend PLT workshops to get materials, activity guides, and identify new opportunities for engaging students.Finally, an educator user guide and associated support materials will be developed. The user guide will cover technical application, suggested student activities to support the IVTs, and resources for educators to access extra learning materials or project leaders. To further encourage and ease the use of IVTs, each learning module will align with Michigan Career and Technical Education Agriculture and Natural Resources and Secondary Next Gen Science Standards.Phase 4. Evaluating IVT Effectiveness. Beyond forest literacy, this project will be successful if there is a demonstrated increase in awareness of pathways and entrance points into forestry careers. Michigan's forest sector - the part of Michigan's economy derived from forests - provides more than 70,000 jobs for our state. This sector includes managing forests, manufacturing of lumber, plywood, poles, paper, energy and other forest products. It also involves careers in forestry, science and engineering, environmental sustainability, arboriculture, ecology, climate science, energy, recreation, government, and forestry support such as firefighting and logging. However, awareness of these varied career options remains low.