The Journey So far: Looking back at 2023

by Samson Adeoye--

As we approached the end of the year 2023, Dr. Curt Friedel took us on a journey of capturing the year in pictures and keeping memories alive. An insightful blog post that connects reflection with learning and experience. In a seemingly orchestrated order, Dr. Megan Seibel provided an educative blog post on how one may approach a new year with new perspectives, drawing connections to cognitive styles and decision-making. As part of reviewing and reflecting on the previous year, members of the AWT4CL met virtually to discuss their teaching and learning experiences. They shared practical wisdom from engaging with their students based on PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) projects, synchronous and asynchronous learning, and implementation of digital learning badges.

The conversation and reflections indicate that the AWT4CL project is creating avenues for cohort members to create engaged learning environments, where instructors create opportunities for students to participate actively in their own learning. For example, cohort members empowered their students to contribute to class activities leading to more participatory learning. A faculty member explained how she achieved this in her class in the video snippet.

In the quest to foster the acquisition of employability skills and bridge the education-to-workforce pipeline, directly engaging students and raising their curiosity to learn is critical (Adeoye & Kaufman, 2023; Kaufman & Adeoye, 2023). It is also encouraging to hear about how cohort members plan to incorporate professionalism, communication, and other employability skills in flexible manners into their class designs. A cohort member stated:

“One of the badges I have to do this spring is ‘Build Professional Relationships … and the assignment is to help the students organize a club meeting. … I thought about it and decided to have the students organize a meeting with a professor because that’s something they’re not doing. … [at the end], we changed gears on that one and we’re going to work on professionalism and being comfortable speaking with faculty.”

Members of the cohort are excited about the opportunities that lie ahead in 2024. More attention is being focused on the implementation of the digital learning badges. Enhancing learners’ development of employability/durable skills remains at the center of the AWT4CL project, and the digital learning badges are one way to spur students to learn skills that will help them in the job market. While our pilot test suggests positive students’ perception of their learning and a slight correlation with the desire to earn badges, we aim to continue to explore different ways to facilitate students' learning of employability skills. Literature shows diverse perspectives on digital badges and learning (Dyjur & Lindstrom, 2017). The overall aim of the AWT4CL project, however, is to use learning badges as a means to an end and not an end in itself. This particularly raises the importance of flexibility, adaptability, and collaboration in the implementation of learning between instructors and students.

References

Adeoye, S., & Kaufman, E. (2023). Co-generative learning: Applying the undisguised case teaching method. Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy, 75-76. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/114242 

Dyjur, P., & Lindstrom, G. (2017). Perceptions and uses of digital badges for professional learning development in higher education. Tech Trends, 61, 386-392. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-017-0168-2 

Kaufman, E. K., & Adeoye, S. (2023). Enhancing learning through undisguised teaching case studies: Both instructor-facilitated and student-written [Conference session]. American Association for Agricultural Education Southern Region Conference, Oklahoma City OK. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/114241 


Acknowledgment

Image from Free Range Stock

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Agriculture Peer Group Formation at the Virginia Community College System

Image
by Adam O'Neal -- Based on input from a cohort of agriculture faculty from around Virginia, an Agriculture and Food Systems Peer Group has been constituted by the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) to serve the needs of agriculture program faculty around the Commonwealth of Virginia. Peer groups have existed for other disciplines for some time, but none for this area of study until now. From the shared experiences of the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) cohort members and other agriculture faculty, we understand that collaboration at professional levels has proven challenging. This peer group promises potential benefits to agriculture faculty in unraveling professional challenges and related classroom and teaching concerns. Agriculture is the largest private industry in Virginia, with over 43,000 farms contributing to $82.3B a year in economic impact (Virginia Farm Bureau, n.d.). Though a number of Virginia Community College System ( V
Read more

Integrating Employability Skills in a Traditional Ag Classroom through Learning Badges

Image
by Dr. Mallory White -- To weave workforce readiness skills into a traditional agriculture classroom can be a little challenging. My first-year animal science class tackled four of the twelve AWT4CL employability learning/digital badges. This blog discusses how we did it, challenges and possible lessons for the instructor and the student, and overall perception of the digital badges.  How We Did It   First, I set aside one lab period to discuss the project and complete many of the in-class activities. This required me to combine two traditionally separate, short labs into one to free up a week, but I was determined to make room for important employability content . The activities from each digital badge created by the badge authors are short and effective, but I wanted the students to do more in order to earn a badge. As an instructor, it can be difficult to come up with new, creative activities in the limited time we have. As I was rushing to come up with additional activities and
Read more

Gamification or “Jobification” – Applying Game Design Approaches as a Bridge to Workforce Skills

Image
  by Celeste Carmichael -- Gamification is a known program design approach used to provide motivation for students and participants to complete tasks - offering visual, virtual, and sometimes tangible rewards and validation of learning. In recent years, and particularly with the broader adoption of e-learning and hybrid work in higher education, experimentation and documentation of gamification as a part of classroom pedagogy has grown .  Beyond content transfer, can this same strategy be used to connect relevant past experiences for students to current classroom learning? Some faculty from the Virginia Community College System involved in the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) are applying these approaches to help students to bridge informal and formal learning experiences, connecting the dots on experiences that can translate to valuable workforce attributes. The AWT4CL cohort members have noted that digital badges used in this way can help studen
Read more