Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL)

by Mallory White -- Three years ago, our institution started exploring digital badges designed around 11 gaps in employability skills and workforce preparedness in college graduates as identified by the APLU . In year one, our institution collaborated with leadership from the AWT4CL project  to help design and learn about classroom activities and associated digital badges . In year two, my Intro to Animal Science course chose to incorporate four of the digital learning badges. In a  December 2023 blog post , I reflected on the pilot year’s successes, challenges, and specific design of each digital badge I used in my classroom. Piloting the badges was a wonderful learning opportunity, and after reflection, led to a fantastic second year! In year two, I was able to improve upon digital badge implementation. I’ve detailed the challenges and solutions that worked for our class in the ‘Problem and Solution Table’ (below). In summary, we spread the activities across multiple ...

by Jama S. Coartney and Eric K. Kaufman --  The Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) Model for Continuous Improvement  has been around in one form or another since the 1930s. In the early days, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, an educator and engineer, called it either the  Shewhart's cycle or a cycle for learning and improvement . Have you ever heard of PDCA or Plan Do Check Act? In the 1950s, the business world derived PDCA from Deming's lectures and work. In fact, Moen and Norman (2009) note that PDSA was the basis for the Total Quality Management (TQM) framework, still used in business today. Deming, however, preferred that it be called the PDSA Model for Improvement; and so, people in the know tend to use the term PDSA.   Why use a PDSA approach in education? Today’s culture calls for data-driven disciplined inquiry; we see examples of this through the introduction of new terms, such as data analytics. As noted by the Deming institute, PDSA can provide a useful tool in...