Admissions | Faculty | Contact Us | Jobs | Monarch
 |
Crop Sciences |
Admissions | Faculty | Contact Us | Jobs | Monarch
|
Crop Sciences |
 |
Cleora J. D'Arcy
|
Plant Pathology, Plant Virology, Professionalism and Ethics, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
In Plant Pathology 200 students learn about our major crop plants and their most important diseases. These plant diseases also are used to introduce students to issues in agriculture, such as monoculture and genetic diversity, mycotoxins and food safety, pesticides and environmental quality, and genetic engineering and regulation of food production. Throughout the semester, students write papers about these issues. In each paper they are expected to present relevant factual material and to develop their own opinion on the issue. Many students who come into the class with firm convictions that "pesticides are bad" or "genetic engineering is good" or "the government regulates too much" reexamine the basis for their opinions while they become better informed about the science behind these issues. A web site (http://www.ppp.uiuc.edu/) developed for the course is described below. Plant Pathology 200 is taught each fall to an audience of 75 undergraduates who come from as many as eight different colleges of the university. Students who enroll can use the class to fulfill general education requirements in both natural science and composition.
In Crop Sciences 590 M.S. and Ph.D. students are provided with information about topics in professionalism, and are encouraged to discuss the ethical dimensions of being a professional scientist. Core topics are selected by the instructors, and include mentor/mentee relationships, scientific writing and authorship, editorial processes, grantsmanship, oral presentations, teaching, management strategies (fiscal, personnel, time), job search, application and benefits. Other topics are selected by the students enrolled. Information is often presented by guest speakers who are particularly knowledgeable about a topic. During discussion sessions, students present and lead discussions of "scenarios", situations which have ethical implications. These can involve attribution of credit, conflict of interest, abuse of power, or other ethical dilemmas. As we discuss these issues, students begin to form or evaluate their own professional ethics. The goal of Crop Sciences 590 is to better prepare graduate students for careers as professional scientists.
The Teaching College course has been taught since 1997 by five senior faculty in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences to over 180 faculty, staff, and graduate students interested in becoming more effective teachers. Class sessions typically include theoretical and practical information on teaching topics, time for interaction with colleagues, and discussion of individual problems and progress. Topics covered in the course include: learning styles, learning theories, levels of cognition, course development, effective lectures and discussions, active learning, teaching assessment, and instructional technology. An important goal of Teaching College is to create a community of teachers in our college.
The PPP Web Site - www.ppp.uiuc.edu
The Plants, Pathogens, and People (PPP) web site was originally designed for students in Plant Pathology 200, but has grown to serve audiences interested in agriculture and science at other institutions in the U.S. and around the world. PPP contains information and activities on issues related to agriculture, presented through case studies of important plant diseases. For example, users can learn about advantages and disadvantages of planting monocultures (Dutch elm) or about the role of people in the spread of diseases (soybean cyst). They can study the effects of temperature and moisture on a virtual epidemic caused by a fungus (late blight) or create virus-resistant plants and test them in virtual field plots (crown gall). Students can record their hypotheses, methods, results, and conclusions in a lab notebook, which can be shared with others. The PPP site also contains numerous resources, including photographs, microscopic images, a dictionary, and a library.
My research program currently focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) as it pertains to science, particularly plant pathology. Two recent studies have been on the use of student response devices in a general education science class, and on relationships between student learning styles and their preferences for different instructional formats and media.
In a class the size of Plant Pathology 200 (75 students) it is common for a few students to participate regularly, for some to participate occasionally, and for many to participate rarely, if at all. In order to increase class participation, and hence learning, we introduced a student response system called iclickers (www.iclickers.com) into the classroom. Students are asked to respond to multiple choice questions at several times during a class period by selecting a button on a handheld device. The instructor can see the responses and can adjust the direction of the class session appropriately. Over two years, students reported that they enjoyed using the iclicker system and, more importantly, that it increased their participation in the class.
Different students learn best in different ways, which are called
their “preferred learning styles”. Over the years, we have introduce
d
a variety of different instructional formats and media into PLPA 200. In
a study to examine the relationships between students’ preferred learning
styles and their preferences for various instructional formats and media, we found
that several methods and tools can be used to reach a great variety of learners. These
include the iclickers discussed above, as well as visual aids such as overheads
or PowerPoint slides, on-line weekly quizzes, and review grids - “fill-in-the-blank” grids
that require students to pull together information learned at different times or
from different sources. Even the much maligned “lecture” is
a powerful learning tool for many students. It is encouraging that we identified
several teaching strategies that help most of the students in a class master the
material.