An official website of the United States government.
<p>The target objectives of the project are the following: </p>
<p>1. Improve agriculture students' ability to solve complex, multidisciplinary problems by having students work on cases that integrate ideas and information from multiple areas. </p>
<p>2. Implement a proven computer based approach to teaching students how to solve multi-disciplinary problems using Iowa State University's open-source ThinkSpace tool at three veterinary programs and two horticulture programs at four U.S. universities. </p>
<p>3. Build and support a community of educators at the five target academic programs. Provide effective technical support, learning cases and/or case development support, and faculty development.</p>
<p>4. Produce at least 20 multi-disciplinary cases that will work using the open-source, online delivery tool ThinkSpace, and that will be freely available to all who wish to use them.</p>
<p>The direct impact of this project will be to increase the ability of graduates of veterinary and horticulture programs at Iowa State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and Kansas State University to solve multidisciplinary challenges that threaten the safety of America's food supply (priority area e), and/or undermine the country's ability to develop and maintain sustainable crop and animal production (priority area c). The developed cases can be used by any program anywhere, hence the overall impact is likely to extend beyond the participating universities. The first year activities will include the open-source release of ThinkSpace, case authoring, building collaborative relationships, planning for implementation in individual programs, and establishing the on-line support framework. We will also collect baseline data regarding student readiness to solve complex interdisciplinary agricultural problems. The second year will be the pilot implementation of the project. All identified programs will incorporate cases into one or more courses in the program. We will also collect data on student performance. The third year will mark the second full year of implementation of the project in multiple programs, with data again collected during that period. During the third year, we will analyze the student performance and prepare the project for broader dissemination.</p>
<p>NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: <br/>Very frequently, problems involving food safety and sustainable agriculture require the perspectives of multiple disciplines to be solved effectively. Currently, however, graduates of programs in agriculture-related disciplines struggle to integrate information when attempting to address problems that cut across relevant disciplines or sub-areas of one discipline. Thus far, educational programs have not successfully addressed this problem. It is not enough simply to expose students to a variety of disciplines; the National Research Council recommends that students must work on complex, multidisciplinary tasks that give them a chance to develop these skills (2009). This project will provide faculty members with a case delivery tool and relevant multidisciplinary cases to use for addressing this problem in their courses. Experts from a variety of
fields related to food safety and sustainable agriculture will come together to create a number of multi-disciplinary cases that will be freely available to anyone, and usable through Iowa State University's free open source "ThinkSpace" software tool. During this project, the participating experts will author cases, make them available, and implement them in three veterinary programs and two horticulture programs at four universities (Iowa State, the University of Pennsylvania, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kansas State University.) As a result of this project, high quality course materials will become widely available, more faculty will be prepared to use those materials, and more agriculture and veterinary students will graduate who are equipped to effectively handle complex multidisciplinary problems related to food safety and sustainable agriculture.
<p>APPROACH: <br/>For each participating program,both in horticulture and in veterinary medicine, cases incorporating concepts drawn mainly from the primary discipline, but incorporating relevant concepts from other disciplines, will be included in the instruction in each participating course. The following illustrative example provides detail from the proposed method at the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine. Authentic clinical cases integrating information from all relevant disciplines will be covered in the final clinical rotation (VDPAM 477). In some instances, the same cases used in a prior course will be extended for use in other disciplines. For example, students in their second year Clinical Pathology course will learn complex diagnostic reasoning skills using clinical laboratory data in over 100 cases. In the Fall semester of their third year,
these same students will again encounter these cases, sometimes with additional data and historical information in their Pharmacology class to learn how to choose appropriate pharmacological interventions. Cases in which poisoning was the central issue will be extended in the Spring semester of the third year to the Toxicology course where they will apply diagnostic rationale and treatment from the perspective of an expert toxicologist. Outcomes will be evaluated as follows: Outcome 1: A minimum 5% increase in ability for students in targeted programs.Success at this outcome will be assessed by first determining the baseline competency of students in target courses in the 5 participating programs. Scores will be compared between the initial (baseline) year and subsequent years to determine if the anticipated changes (5% or 1/2 grade level improvement) have occurred. Outcome 2: Number of
U.S. graduates with a measurably improved ability to solve multi-disciplinary problems increased by 4% in horticulture and 14% in veterinary medicine. This will be determined by first determining how many targeted students, on average, in a given academic class (freshman, sophomore, etc.) achieved the results targeted in outcome 1 (for both all horticulture students and all veterinary students participating in target programs). We will then calculate the percentage of all graduates of horticulture and veterinary programs, in a given year, whose abilities to solve these inter-disciplinary problems improved as a result of this program. We will also evaluate learner use of and satisfaction with the learning materials to be developed.