Implementation of Teaching Methods to Develop Plant Identification Mastery among College Students

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Date
2017-12-06
Authors
Striegel, Sarah
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Honors Projects and Posters
University Honors Program

The Honors project is potentially the most valuable component of an Honors education. Typically Honors students choose to do their projects in their area of study, but some will pick a topic of interest unrelated to their major.

The Honors Program requires that the project be presented at a poster presentation event. Poster presentations are held each semester. Most students present during their senior year, but may do so earlier if their honors project has been completed.

This site presents project descriptions and selected posters for Honors projects completed since the Fall 2015 semester.

Department
Agronomy
Abstract

Students enrolled in Agronomy 330: Crop and Seed Identification Laboratory work to master the skill of plant identification of several crops, forages, and weeds. Prior to the beginning of the Fall 2017 semester, the course content was reorganized by taxonomic families and revised to stress vegetative identification. Adjustments were made to promote mastery by setting an expected performance level each student must achieve before proceeding to new material. Additionally, new course materials were developed weekly to facilitate learning with an emphasis on anatomical drawing. Students were required to achieve a passing score of 90% on each quiz. A supplemental quiz was offered weekly for students to improve upon their score. On average, 25% of students fell into this category, but it varied from 10-50%. Data in terms of students’ performance in the course cannot be directly compared to previous semesters, due to the difference in human subjects, and there was no control group in this traditional classroom setting. It was determined the implementation of the changes to the course and new teaching methods was relatively more effective in developing mastery in a greater percentage of students this semester compared to past semesters.

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