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 Adam O’Neal -- Participating in the Agricultural Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL)  cohort has been a rewarding and instructive experience exploring ways to strengthen durable skills in graduates of agriculture programs. The numerous opportunities to network, share best practices, and explore new methods to improve teaching agriculture classes have been extremely valuable. Image credit: Holgerhubbs, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons . Among the various projects undertaken as part of this program was the implementation of digital badges. In collaboration with colleagues in the Agriculture program at our institution, activities were implemented in three classes for students to earn digital badges for completing activities supporting mastery of 11 durable skills identified by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) . For another study including employability skills and career preparation generally, s...

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...

By Jama S. Coartney and Eric K. Kaufman --  The Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership  cohort met January 13, 2023, to check in and discuss topics of mutual interest, including PDSA projects, opportunities to share key insights with a broader audience, and the potential of incorporating digital badges into the learning management system. During the summer of 2022, each member of the cohort drafted a PDSA proposal to focus on an aspect of their teaching they would like to improve and test.  The January 2023 meeting focused on updates on this work.   The cohort faculty used  IdeaBoardz  to share news on pilot projects, gain feedback and insight from others, and explore ideas for future improvements.This video summarizes a discussion around the challenges faculty face with balancing the amount of class time to both engage with students and cover content.  The project blog  contains some updates from va...

  By Donna Westfall-Rudd and Jama S. Coartney --    One option might be to take a more student-centered learning approach to your online courses. While teaching in-person has advantages when it comes to making connections, you can still create a classroom atmosphere with engagement and interaction, by focusing on the needs, interests, and inquiries of your students. In a recent publication, Teaching in the University , Rachel Mack offers guidance on exactly how to go about making these additions to the curriculum in the chapter entitled, “4. Teaching Practices for Student-Centered Learning Online.”  Recently published as an open textbook, this resource offers suggestions on how to engage students in an online environment.  It also offers tips and things to consider when working with students to increase the opportunity for them to build relationships with others in the course and feel engaged with the course content. For example, one action you can take is to t...

By Jama Coartney and Donna Westfall-Rudd --  In Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope , bell hooks writes about the stress of grading:  " Like many teachers I found grading