Performing Department
Agriculture & Life Sciences
Non Technical Summary
In Guam, we serve communities that, for most of our college-bound students, are Pacific islanders and first generation students entering a college or university for the first time. There are few students learning about agriculture in their undergraduate education. In our insular island environment, there is a need to educate young generations on the importance of agricultural sciences, food, and the environment in supporting island sustainability. The specific educational problem we will address in this project is to increase the online presence of the Tropical Agricultural Science Program (TASP) making courses and other educational information available to a wider audience both on Guam and in the Pacific region than is currently possible with on campus activities. There are four objectives: 1) Develop an online enrichment course for teachers; 2) Enhance the online delivery of UOG courses offered in agriculture and food sciences; 3) Use online delivery of workshops and lectures developed in the proposed University of Guam RIIA project, to increase the bridging among students and instructors in Guam and the Pacific Region. 4) Develop a Moodle shell and develop materials to produce a web site for high school students, teachers and prospective and current students. Meeting these objectives will increase educational opportunities relating food and agricultural sciences to future students.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The major goal of this project is to increase the online presence of the Tropical Agricultural Science Program (TASP) making courses and other educational information available to a wider audience both on Guam and in the Pacific region than is currently possible with on campus activities.Project Objectives:1) Develop an online enrichment course for teachers; 2) Enhance the online delivery of UOG courses offered in agriculture and food sciences; 3) Use online delivery of workshops and lectures developed in the proposed University of Guam RIIA project, to increase the bridging among students and instructors in Guam and the Pacific Region. 4) Develop a Moodle shell and develop materials to produce a web site for high school students, teachers and prospective and current students.
Project Methods
a. Plan of operation and methodologyDr. James McConnell will manage and coordinate the activities of this proposal.(ENA#1) Curricula Design, Materials Development and Library ResourcesFor Objectives 1 and 2, and 4 Dr. H. Diambra Odi will be hired as faculty with DEG funding to develop the High School teachers' course. Dr. Diambra Odi will also assist in the coordination of the courses to be delivered remotely by Dr. Nipp. Through discussions with our current Agriculture majors, it was found that they have a preference for labs to be offered in the classroom. As a result, courses will be delivered as hybrid courses. In hybrid courses, the lectures will be online and the laboratory activities will be conducted in the classroom with a facilitator and enhanced with online support. A research associate and a research assistant will support the online delivery development with expertise in working with the course development and course management software. A Site License for SoftChalk, multiple copies of Adobe Captivate, and ZebraZapps will enhance the course development activities. The web site shell will be developed in Moodle by My Chris Pangelinan. Mr. Pangelinan will work with Drs. Odi and McConnell to develop the shell, activities and content.(ENA#3) Instruction Delivery SystemsFor Objective 3) Online Delivery of Course Content Using Presentations and Seminars in GoToWebinar, Dr. Terry Nipp will develop online course materials as a component of the UOG application to the Resident Instruction Grants Program for Institutions of Higher Education in Insular Areas Program (USDA-NIFA-RIIA 2014). Materials will be developed and delivered for three subject matter areas: (1) climate change, (2) renewable bio-based energy, and (3) food and agricultural policy, which may be offered as 1 credit (15 hours), 2 credit (30 hours) OR 3 credits (45 hours) during 15 week-semester to students at UOG. He will confer with leading national experts in the respective subject matter areas and will include video-based modules as well as interactive real-time teleconferencing/GoToWebinar (which will be subscribed to with USDA-NIFA-DEG-2014 funding.) with leading experts at other institutions as components of these courses. He will also work with local experts in Guam and faculty at UOG to develop the materials that demonstrate how these issues impact the islands in the Pacific and Guam. By also making the delivery of these presentations available online the procedures will be worked out so that in future years these presentations can be expanded into Symposia with participants from many institutions.ENA#5 Student Recruitment, Retention, and Educational EquityThe main goal of developing the course for teachers is to promote using Agriculture and Food Science topics to teach STEM subject to students. The intended outcome of this objective that teaches will incorporate what they learn in the course in their classroom. One of the activities of Dr. Odi, who is mainly funded through the UOG RIIA project, is recruiting high school students for the Tropical Agricultural Science Program. By teachers covering STEM subjects through agricultural topics, it is hoped that there will be an increased interest in high school students to participate in the Summer Internship program, which is also funded through the UOG RIIA project. By recruiting students that are familiar with agriculture, there should be an increase in the enrollment in the UOG Agriculture program. The proposed web site will also support these activities by serving as a clearing house of materials and hopefully support the development of a community of students, teachers and faculty which will enhance the interest in agriculture and food science.The online instructional materials will be a resource for teachers and students to download and supply links to information that relates to Agriculture and STEM topics. There will also be web cam support, which will be set up on the UOG Campus, and the UOG Triton Farm to enable students, in the classroom, to view ongoing experiments showing plants and animals, live, on demand. Dr. Terry Nipp will develop online course materials as a component of the UOG application to the Resident Instruction Grants Program for Institutions of Higher Education in Insular Areas Program (USDA?NIFA-RIIA 2014). Materials will be developed and delivered for three subject matter areas: (1) climate change, (2) renewable biobased energy, and (3) food and agricultural policy, which may be offered as 1 credit (15 hours), 2 credit (30 hours) OR 3 credits (45 hours) during 15 week-semester to students at UOG. Dr. Nipp will work with local experts in Guam and faculty at UOG to develop the materials that demonstrate how these issues impact the islands in the Pacific and Guam. He will confer with leading national experts in the respective subject matter areas and will include video-based modules as well as interactive real-time teleconferencing/GoToWebinar with leading experts at other institutions as components of these courses. By using webcams and GoToWebinar software to support the online delivery of the presentations and workshops, students and teachers, at home and in the classroom, will be able to participate or observe presentations that previously would not be available to them.