Experiential Learning and Community Engagement in SCIL 101

Jenny Dauer, Associate Director for Undergraduate Education in SNR, Associate Professor in Science Literacy Author

12/18/2023 Added

5 Plays

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This is the last seminar of 2023.

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[00:00:00.750]The following presentation
[00:00:02.220]is part of the Agronomy and Horticulture seminar series
[00:00:05.790]at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:00:08.070]We're ready to get started. Everyone.
[00:00:11.400]Little bit late, but I think everyone had some time
[00:00:14.040]to get popcorn, so that's good.
[00:00:17.460]It is my great pleasure today to welcome Dr. Jenny Dauer,
[00:00:21.270]to present here in the Department of Agronomy
[00:00:23.970]and Horticulture.
[00:00:25.710]Just a brief introduction.
[00:00:27.060]So Jenny is the Associate Director
[00:00:28.800]for Undergraduate Education
[00:00:30.150]in the School of Natural Resources at UNL,
[00:00:32.850]where she's also an Associate Professor in science literacy.
[00:00:36.630]She received her PhD in Ecosystems Ecology
[00:00:39.930]in the Department of Forest Science
[00:00:42.030]at Oregon State University.
[00:00:44.070]And then before coming to UNL, she did a discipline
[00:00:48.210]based education research postdoc
[00:00:50.190]and was also the carbon time project director
[00:00:53.700]at Michigan State University.
[00:00:57.270]Jenny has quite an impressive publication record
[00:01:00.510]and is very active.
[00:01:02.640]She's published 37 peer review journal articles.
[00:01:05.730]She's been invited to speak nationally and internationally.
[00:01:09.510]She has been involved late, I think seven large
[00:01:13.650]science curriculum development and design projects.
[00:01:17.670]She also received the holing Holling Family Award
[00:01:20.910]for teaching excellence in 2017.
[00:01:24.360]She has several externally funded awards.
[00:01:27.060]Most of them that I saw
[00:01:28.200]were with the National Science Foundation and with the USDA.
[00:01:32.640]And so the final thing that I will say about Jenny,
[00:01:36.600]I could go on and on.
[00:01:40.110]She's very prolific.
[00:01:42.600]She's a wonderful researcher, she's a wonderful educator,
[00:01:45.930]but she's also a wonderful person.
[00:01:47.820]And then just the last little bit here,
[00:01:49.770]her research is focused around supporting student learning
[00:01:52.320]for science literacy and students understanding
[00:01:54.840]of complex biological and earth systems.
[00:01:57.210]And today she will be sharing some of that work with us.
[00:02:01.080]So thank you so much for being with us today, Jenny.
[00:02:03.180]We're very happy to have you.
[00:02:06.100]And that was really, really nice introduction.
[00:02:09.030]Very sweet and really happy to be here today.
[00:02:14.190]Thank you for being here. It's Friday.
[00:02:16.380]And it's like finals week, so that's nice.
[00:02:20.760]And in the spirit of that as well,
[00:02:22.350]I hope that you feel like you can make this more
[00:02:25.110]of a conversation and more casual
[00:02:27.240]please feel free to stop me at any point
[00:02:28.920]if you have a question or a comment or whatever.
[00:02:32.550]I'm happy just to be here and share a little bit with you.
[00:02:34.890]I'm gonna, with this presentation,
[00:02:36.780]try to hit a balance between a little interesting tidbit
[00:02:40.410]of some of the research we've been doing lately
[00:02:42.240]and then some stuff that we've been up to in the course
[00:02:45.600]in terms of changes that we've been making
[00:02:47.520]to science literacy 101 and kind of new
[00:02:50.670]and exciting things that we're thinking about.
[00:02:54.030]So I think the first thing that I'd like to start with
[00:02:58.470]is just talking about what is science literacy?
[00:03:01.950]Because I think people use that phrase
[00:03:03.720]in a lot of different ways.
[00:03:05.220]I think it's helpful right off the bat to let you know
[00:03:07.124]how I'm thinking about it when I say science literacy.
[00:03:10.200]And the way I think about it is to do sort of a backwards
[00:03:13.620]design frame.
[00:03:14.820]So thinking about our students five years from now,
[00:03:18.810]10 years from now, and imagine like, okay,
[00:03:21.630]there's a student, there may be a decision they need
[00:03:24.930]to make professionally, or it could be something
[00:03:28.050]that they're dealing with personally,
[00:03:29.460]like a new health diagnosis or a threat to the wellbeing
[00:03:34.290]of their community or a new issue coming up locally
[00:03:39.630]or something like that.
[00:03:40.680]And thinking about like, so what have we done
[00:03:43.890]to prepare that person for that situation,
[00:03:47.760]either professionally or personally to use science
[00:03:51.540]to make a decision or to be able to act?
[00:03:56.970]And so while traditionally our science education
[00:04:02.010]has focused on providing content knowledge,
[00:04:04.830]and that's certainly important
[00:04:05.820]and also we really focus a lot also on preparing
[00:04:08.670]a workforce and thinking about science skills
[00:04:11.040]and preparing people to be scientists
[00:04:14.160]that's maybe not sufficient for all of the complexities
[00:04:17.400]that students may face in certain situations in the future.
[00:04:20.730]So I think about students needing knowledge,
[00:04:23.550]certainly of science concepts,
[00:04:26.250]but then also having skills like being able to read
[00:04:29.610]about science either in a popular media
[00:04:32.970]or even peer reviewed literature
[00:04:35.460]and being able to think about the science
[00:04:37.500]that they're learning and applying it
[00:04:38.730]to these complex things that they're dealing with.
[00:04:42.060]We also want them to be persistent and feel like
[00:04:44.580]they can have confidence in learning more new things
[00:04:48.120]and like look up new articles
[00:04:49.740]and do some like parallel reading kinds of practices,
[00:04:54.150]cross-referencing other articles and trying to make sense
[00:04:56.610]of things, I call this like the sense making skill
[00:05:00.840]and also have the capacity to discuss matters
[00:05:03.990]of science with their friends and family and colleagues.
[00:05:08.550]And then also know how to seek out expertise when needed.
[00:05:12.420]And so thinking about all of those things,
[00:05:14.160]but I also think it doesn't even stop there,
[00:05:16.050]but there's more that's needed
[00:05:18.180]to be scientifically literate.
[00:05:19.710]I think that's also knowing how all of the science stuff
[00:05:24.030]can fit in with some of the other non-science stuff.
[00:05:26.490]So that includes thinking about science
[00:05:30.060]and really what their goals are and their values
[00:05:33.930]and emotions like hopes and fears,
[00:05:36.450]thinking about how science information plays a role
[00:05:38.760]in social context and social norms,
[00:05:42.330]cultural things including barriers.
[00:05:46.080]Barriers that they might have to succeeding in the things
[00:05:49.350]that they want to succeed and barriers to changing behavior
[00:05:54.480]or whatever it is.
[00:05:55.500]And be able to make sense of this complex landscape.
[00:06:00.000]And so a definition that I like is scientifically literate
[00:06:05.250]individuals recognize when science has some bearing
[00:06:08.850]on their needs and interests and can access
[00:06:11.370]and make sense of science to achieve their goals.
[00:06:14.700]And so then I think about, okay, so how do we do that
[00:06:17.490]in a classroom?
[00:06:18.360]And there's lots of things I think that we can do.
[00:06:20.953]I think there's a lot of things that fit under this umbrella
[00:06:24.300]of getting people to this place where they feel comfortable
[00:06:27.330]and understand how to make sense of science
[00:06:28.980]to use it in their lives and in their communities.
[00:06:31.950]And then I think about how can we make sure
[00:06:35.040]we're providing a foundation for all of these things
[00:06:37.860]for students.
[00:06:39.570]And so today, when I think about science literacy
[00:06:44.010]for the context of this talk,
[00:06:45.660]I think we can move also from thinking about individuals
[00:06:48.630]to thinking about communities
[00:06:50.160]and thinking about science literacy on a community level.
[00:06:52.410]So we can reframe that definition to something
[00:06:56.370]that says something like scientifically literate individuals
[00:06:59.160]recognize when science has bearing on the needs
[00:07:01.620]and interests of a community and can access and make sense
[00:07:05.220]of science to achieve the goals of a community.
[00:07:08.250]And so really thinking about how people play a role
[00:07:11.460]in society and are civically engaged
[00:07:14.010]and use science to do so.
[00:07:17.430]And I think sometimes people think about this
[00:07:20.130]not necessarily as our job
[00:07:21.210]we're here to train professionals
[00:07:22.560]so we don't think about this, you know,
[00:07:24.180]sometimes as part of our mission.
[00:07:26.130]But I wanted to point out the Department of Education
[00:07:29.520]in 2012 had this document they put out
[00:07:32.280]called the "Crucible Moment College Learning
[00:07:34.740]and Democracy's Future."
[00:07:35.760]And they said, "We call on higher education community
[00:07:38.160]to embrace civic learning and democratic engagement
[00:07:41.130]as an undisputed educational priority for all
[00:07:43.410]of higher education that will require constructing
[00:07:46.440]educational environments where education for democracy
[00:07:49.353]and civic responsibility is pervasive,
[00:07:52.560]not partial and central, not peripheral."
[00:07:55.800]I think it's really fascinating to think about,
[00:07:57.450]they're called 2012 a crucible moments.
[00:08:00.660]I feel like things have only intensified
[00:08:02.220]in the last 10 years since then.
[00:08:04.080]And thinking about preparing people
[00:08:05.910]for dealing `with difficult societal issues
[00:08:09.270]and preparing them for being citizens of a democracy.
[00:08:13.680]So I think this falls under the umbrella of things
[00:08:16.830]that we should be thinking about
[00:08:18.570]as educators at a college level.
[00:08:21.990]And so in terms of my research, there are people
[00:08:26.250]that think about this in science education research world,
[00:08:30.090]but there's still some digging into it.
[00:08:32.280]This is still sort of a, not something
[00:08:35.640]that is studied really heavily in science education.
[00:08:38.130]I won't go into all the studies and stuff like that,
[00:08:39.570]but one of the things that we are thinking about
[00:08:42.420]is how to develop a conceptual model that explains
[00:08:46.350]how students go from classroom learning
[00:08:49.620]to transferring the things, the knowledge and skills
[00:08:53.790]that they learn in a classroom to real world contexts
[00:08:58.170]and thinking about what is it, is it about the context
[00:09:01.740]or the the quality of the students or characteristics
[00:09:04.650]that they have that support their development
[00:09:06.600]of these skills that will allow them to be successful
[00:09:10.230]in terms of community engagement.
[00:09:12.600]And so a lot of this research is that I've been doing
[00:09:15.480]is thinking about how do students develop confidence?
[00:09:18.810]How do they develop willingness to engage
[00:09:21.870]in community action and what sorts of classroom context
[00:09:28.620]can support the development of these characteristics
[00:09:31.500]in our students?
[00:09:33.900]And so one of the things that's been a useful framework
[00:09:37.560]for me in our research is a concept
[00:09:40.080]called scientific engagement that was developed
[00:09:42.930]by colleagues over at the CU Boulder in Colorado.
[00:09:49.470]And so they define scientific engagement
[00:09:51.750]as the collective engagement with the community
[00:09:55.620]using science skills, with the intention of strengthening
[00:09:58.950]or improving the local community
[00:10:00.600]and supporting positive change.
[00:10:02.970]And so in their idea of scientific engagement
[00:10:06.450]they have for constructs, so thinking about civic value,
[00:10:11.460]valuing the importance of community engagement,
[00:10:14.220]civic action, like planning actions
[00:10:17.340]and thinking about actions they can take to aid others.
[00:10:20.250]Civic efficacy, so confidence that they can use
[00:10:23.610]their science knowledge and skills to support others
[00:10:26.490]and civic knowledge, like knowing how to support communities
[00:10:31.260]using their science knowledge and skills.
[00:10:33.930]And one of the things that I like about what my colleagues
[00:10:35.970]here in Colorado did was when they think about
[00:10:39.540]these constructs, they've created an assessment
[00:10:42.390]that can make it specific.
[00:10:45.510]So we can like these are example statements
[00:10:48.000]that show up in an assessment that we can use
[00:10:51.060]to look at science civic engagement.
[00:10:53.010]And we can frame the assessment around
[00:10:55.590]particular communities.
[00:10:56.880]So in these statements instead of this community,
[00:10:58.890]we could say, I believe I have responsibility to support
[00:11:02.280]huskers using my science literacy knowledge.
[00:11:05.580]Or it could be the LGBTQA+ community
[00:11:09.270]or whatever community you wanna put in there,
[00:11:11.850]whatever community students see themselves
[00:11:13.590]a part of could be put into this assessment
[00:11:17.100]and it could be using my science literacy knowledge,
[00:11:20.430]but it could also be using my agronomy knowledge
[00:11:22.770]or using my biology knowledge or whatever it is.
[00:11:25.710]So it connects, explicitly connects
[00:11:29.070]what students are learning in the classroom
[00:11:30.960]to a specific community that they have in their head
[00:11:33.810]that they're thinking about.
[00:11:35.130]So it really puts in the contextual elements,
[00:11:36.990]not in sort of a abstract way but in a really specific way.
[00:11:41.910]So science literacy 101, I don't think a lot of you probably
[00:11:45.720]have some familiarity with this class
[00:11:48.270]because all of our CASNR students
[00:11:50.370]are required to take the course.
[00:11:51.840]There's about 600 students a year that take SCIL 101.
[00:11:56.790]And it's the way the course works
[00:12:00.510]is that we're focused on skills which makes it handy
[00:12:04.020]that the acronym is SCIL, you can say SCIL, SCIL 101.
[00:12:09.510]So we focus on decision making, information literacy,
[00:12:15.510]and systems thinking as the things
[00:12:18.570]that we're trying to support in our students.
[00:12:21.120]And the students practice those skills
[00:12:22.590]in many different kinds of activities
[00:12:24.990]in an iterative fashion throughout the semester
[00:12:28.050]with different socio scientific issues as the backdrop
[00:12:32.040]for their practice.
[00:12:33.090]So we try to bring in these real world contexts
[00:12:35.640]for them to be thinking about these skills.
[00:12:38.820]Most recently we've been doing a lot of,
[00:12:42.213]does this have a little thing?
[00:12:43.530]Yeah, plastic pollution as one of the modules.
[00:12:47.130]We've done water conservation in Nebraska
[00:12:49.800]and lately we've done like flood mitigation
[00:12:52.650]and thinking about preparation for natural disasters
[00:12:55.320]like flooding.
[00:12:56.520]But in the past we've done lots of different things,
[00:12:58.950]conservation of different species
[00:13:00.420]including pollinators and mountain lions.
[00:13:02.910]We've done biofuels a long time ago.
[00:13:04.620]It's been about nine years
[00:13:05.940]that I've been the lead instructor of this course.
[00:13:09.300]So it's evolved a lot over the last nine years
[00:13:14.100]and I think we're in a good place now
[00:13:17.655]and we're learning how to do this better and better
[00:13:19.350]all the time.
[00:13:21.420]And I'm not gonna go way into depth
[00:13:23.220]in terms of the activities that we do in the class,
[00:13:25.110]but I'd be happy to.
[00:13:25.980]But I'm worried that there are people
[00:13:27.210]who've seen it too many times already.
[00:13:28.710]So, but just to give you a larger picture
[00:13:32.100]of what the course looks like.
[00:13:36.060]We have the students practice skills
[00:13:38.400]like this is the plastic pollution,
[00:13:39.540]which is the intro thing.
[00:13:41.040]We kind of introduce some concepts
[00:13:43.080]like fast and slow thinking and media literacy
[00:13:46.050]and epistemology, like how do we know
[00:13:47.910]what does science do for us
[00:13:49.440]in terms of how do we know and what are the limits
[00:13:50.850]of science and other ways of thinking and knowing.
[00:13:54.690]And then we introduced the structured decision making
[00:13:56.970]framework that allows students to really practice thinking
[00:13:59.520]about trade-offs and thinking about their own values
[00:14:01.830]and the values of others.
[00:14:03.270]And doing some perspective taking of others
[00:14:06.960]and applying evidence.
[00:14:09.090]And in the structured decision making,
[00:14:10.440]they compare three or four different policy solutions
[00:14:14.730]to these challenges and do a values trade off
[00:14:18.420]to decide like which one fits their personal prioritization
[00:14:22.920]of outcomes.
[00:14:25.350]And within that they're also doing some group sense making
[00:14:28.170]of evidence and some reflection.
[00:14:31.170]And so they do that throughout these three modules.
[00:14:34.410]And then in the middle we have a unit
[00:14:36.900]that's a little more intense
[00:14:38.910]and where we kind of back off our support
[00:14:40.892]and the students have to do it with more autonomy.
[00:14:43.350]So they're doing water conservation and flood mitigation
[00:14:45.840]this past fall were the two focus units there,
[00:14:49.110]depending on which lecture section you were in.
[00:14:51.300]And we do a little bit more with science
[00:14:52.710]evidence evaluation, like we talk a little bit about
[00:14:55.140]like what's a controlled study versus a correlation study
[00:14:57.990]and where the limitations of those things
[00:14:59.550]and stuff like that.
[00:15:00.540]And then the last five weeks, the students do a lot more
[00:15:05.520]without our support, we take away some more scaffolding
[00:15:08.970]and have them pick a topic
[00:15:11.340]that they're really interested in,
[00:15:12.900]and then go kind of through that whole process again.
[00:15:15.990]And then at the end of all that, they have a poster
[00:15:18.300]where they present their thinking on these complex topics.
[00:15:21.630]And some of you thank you for being poster judges
[00:15:25.380]at the these events.
[00:15:27.870]And so we try to bring in outside people
[00:15:30.060]from outside the class to make sure students
[00:15:32.430]are making sense to people outside of the organization
[00:15:35.910]that we have in the class and can get some feedback
[00:15:39.600]and to raise the pressure a little bit on them
[00:15:41.250]a little tiny bit.
[00:15:42.083]But lately, and I'll tell you some more,
[00:15:44.730]we have experiential learning component
[00:15:47.370]now that's required as part of the course.
[00:15:48.870]So something like four to six hours
[00:15:51.240]of experiential learning.
[00:15:52.260]And I'll kind of explain a little bit later
[00:15:54.030]where we're at with that.
[00:15:55.050]But this is sort of new within the last few years
[00:15:57.780]we just started piloting it and this year, this fall,
[00:16:01.710]we've had a lot more emphasis on that aspect of it
[00:16:05.190]and are getting better at getting our students
[00:16:07.500]to do that part of it.
[00:16:10.980]So back to the research stuff.
[00:16:14.580]So in thinking about developing
[00:16:16.980]more of this conceptual model for scientific engagement
[00:16:19.980]for students, this is works from a manuscript
[00:16:23.310]that a postdoc working with me, Jen is doing,
[00:16:26.400]she's getting close to submitting this paper soon
[00:16:29.250]and we were asking a couple of research questions.
[00:16:31.650]One is, how do students report that they might use knowledge
[00:16:35.880]and skills to benefit their communities?
[00:16:37.590]So just in general, what's in students' heads
[00:16:39.270]when we ask them how can you use your science knowledge
[00:16:41.730]and skills to support a community?
[00:16:43.290]And what do they think about that?
[00:16:44.940]Where are they at currently?
[00:16:48.150]We're asked them or we've looked at variability
[00:16:51.690]in scientific engagement.
[00:16:54.600]If it can be explained by students' science identity
[00:16:57.210]or their own perceived cohesion to a community.
[00:17:02.670]I'll talk about that in a little bit more too.
[00:17:05.280]And then we looked at whether the class increases
[00:17:07.380]students' scientific engagement.
[00:17:10.080]So I'm gonna walk you through our results
[00:17:11.610]to these research questions
[00:17:13.050]and then we'll go back to talking a little bit more
[00:17:14.400]about the class.
[00:17:16.200]But so we collected data across three semesters
[00:17:21.180]and then all three of these semesters
[00:17:25.020]there was a little sprinkling of experiential learning
[00:17:27.360]but it wasn't as much of an emphasis
[00:17:29.520]as this past semester.
[00:17:31.710]But they had the same final project
[00:17:33.240]and the same modules structure that I mentioned
[00:17:35.580]before in the same real world context.
[00:17:39.480]So we looked at data pre and post the semester
[00:17:43.977]and we used our colleagues' instrument
[00:17:46.230]from Colorado which is called,
[00:17:47.550]the Predictors of Scientific Engagement Survey.
[00:17:50.520]And when we asked students the questions on this survey,
[00:17:54.360]we asked them to first come up with a community
[00:17:57.240]that they identified with and asked them to select
[00:18:02.850]that community as the focus of all the questions
[00:18:05.190]in the instrument.
[00:18:06.023]So instead of when I had that earlier example,
[00:18:08.610]instead of this community,
[00:18:09.450]it would have whatever the students said,
[00:18:11.820]the community that they identified with.
[00:18:14.370]So they were thinking specifically about a community
[00:18:17.160]that they cared about.
[00:18:19.170]And then at the end of the survey we would ask them,
[00:18:22.530]after considering these previous statements,
[00:18:24.210]describe a specific example of how, if at all,
[00:18:27.180]you think that science can be used to solve problems
[00:18:29.640]within this community.
[00:18:32.969]And then we gave a survey on how much they perceived
[00:18:36.900]they had cohesion to this community, how close they felt,
[00:18:40.020]how connected they felt, how much part of that community
[00:18:42.030]they felt they were.
[00:18:44.280]And did a survey on science identity.
[00:18:48.793]And just to give you a sense of what students chose
[00:18:50.550]as their community, we had a couple different categories
[00:18:53.280]of things and here are some examples.
[00:18:55.080]There were a lot of students who talked about
[00:18:56.730]a college community calling it huskers or students
[00:18:59.540]or CASNR or their fraternity.
[00:19:02.190]There were a lot of demographic ones.
[00:19:04.080]LGBTQA+ was a big one.
[00:19:06.690]Asian or other race or ethnic ethnicity categories
[00:19:10.590]they may pick or gender or sexuality categories.
[00:19:15.690]We had a lot of geographic Nebraska and Kearney.
[00:19:20.280]Some people just said a rural community.
[00:19:23.187]And then a lot that were interest oriented,
[00:19:25.110]like some put their major 4-H or agricultural identity.
[00:19:31.260]There were lots of different ones in that category.
[00:19:36.450]So before I give you, sorry to be all teachery,
[00:19:39.300]but it is Friday, I'm gonna ask you guys to take a minute
[00:19:43.620]to think about this question yourself.
[00:19:47.160]So how would you answer this question
[00:19:49.320]if you had to think about it?
[00:19:50.370]Like how would you use your science skills and knowledge
[00:19:54.360]to serve a community that you care about?
[00:19:56.970]So think about how you would answer that question
[00:19:58.770]and then I'll tell you what the student said.
[00:20:00.270]So I'm gonna give you a minute or two to chat.
[00:21:32.100]All right, let's come back together.
[00:21:35.460]Anyone wanna offer something that came through their minds?
[00:21:38.490]That they thought about in thinking about how science
[00:21:42.870]or their science knowledge and skills could be used
[00:21:44.790]to solve problems in your community?
[00:21:49.980]Don't make me call names (laughs).
[00:21:56.220]That's my question about when
[00:21:58.918]in your experience (indistinct).
[00:22:03.720]So I'm teaching BLS 131
[00:22:07.740]and one of the things we're trying to do is incorporate
[00:22:11.020]more science literature in right off at the get go,
[00:22:16.140]you know, they come in and they're asked to find
[00:22:18.900]scientific papers and factor those into the experiment
[00:22:25.140]they're right or not.
[00:22:26.880]So I guess I'm curious about how applied do they really feel
[00:22:35.250]this is when they're take, I mean is that,
[00:22:38.150]do you find there's a disconnect between the principles
[00:22:41.760]that you're teaching them about let's say,
[00:22:44.490]you know, science literature and how to use it,
[00:22:48.870]with depending on what their major is or you know,
[00:22:53.560]whether or not they see an immediate application
[00:22:56.490]for those types of skills?
[00:22:59.310]Yeah, so do they see application in skills
[00:23:01.890]like finding literature, science literature
[00:23:04.590]and applying it to a problem?
[00:23:07.950]That's a good question. I think they do.
[00:23:12.930]I think that it varies by students.
[00:23:20.430]This is a new skill for a lot of them
[00:23:22.530]and it's really, really hard to do.
[00:23:25.230]Yeah we have huge amounts
[00:23:29.108]of engagement in what we're asking them to do.
[00:23:31.620]And I'm just wondering how much of that difference
[00:23:34.890]relates to, you know, what.
[00:23:38.010]How much they value it, yeah versus experience.
[00:23:42.600]As an ace-4 I really don't care how
[00:23:45.420]they just want to get over it.
[00:23:47.304]You know, whether they realize, okay, this is a skill
[00:23:49.410]I really need.
[00:23:51.300]So I'm gonna make most of this opportunity.
[00:23:53.610]Yeah that's something I think about
[00:23:56.280]a lot as an instructor too.
[00:23:57.600]Like, so how to motivate the students more really.
[00:24:01.560]And I do think that issue that the students
[00:24:05.070]are working on itself can be really motivating
[00:24:07.710]or demotivating.
[00:24:08.760]So I think the topic that we're doing,
[00:24:10.620]as much as I don't want it to matter
[00:24:11.940]'cause I think it's just feels that are important,
[00:24:13.530]the topics really, really matter to the students.
[00:24:15.861]It motivates or demotivates them.
[00:24:18.090]And unfortunately there really, really takes a lot of time
[00:24:20.520]and effort to create new modules too.
[00:24:23.040]Ultimately we would like to have lots of different options.
[00:24:25.290]So it's always changing.
[00:24:27.030]But some of the research we're doing too shows
[00:24:30.030]that some of the students are find a lot more value
[00:24:32.670]in the tasks than others.
[00:24:35.730]This is in particular when we do the group sense making,
[00:24:38.130]they're looking at peer reviewed literature
[00:24:40.170]and having to make sense of it in context
[00:24:42.660]of the decision making.
[00:24:45.210]And I think that sometimes students
[00:24:50.340]with a little more experience in college
[00:24:53.370]understand why it's important to do,
[00:24:55.410]and they maybe are required to do it more broadly.
[00:24:58.410]I think a lot of students coming from high school
[00:25:00.210]haven't had a lot of experience
[00:25:02.310]where they've had to do it at this level.
[00:25:05.340]I was just talking this morning with Tiffany Hamas
[00:25:07.560]about this course and thinking about, you know,
[00:25:09.840]what else can we do to make it better?
[00:25:11.250]And we were kind of wondering, you know,
[00:25:13.110]some of what they're doing is really quite high level.
[00:25:15.240]Maybe it should be more like a sophomore course
[00:25:17.790]and maybe they would get more value out of it,
[00:25:19.920]once they see that, you know,
[00:25:21.900]that thinking about peer reviewed literature, writing,
[00:25:24.630]argumentation, kinds of things,
[00:25:26.610]using peer reviewed literature
[00:25:27.870]is something that they're gonna use throughout.
[00:25:29.910]But on the other hand, it's also sort of like,
[00:25:31.157]I feel like this course kind of breaks them in a little bit
[00:25:33.720]and it's a foundation that other courses can use,
[00:25:36.330]otherwise they're coming into all these other courses
[00:25:38.070]not ever having, you know,
[00:25:39.630]no context to using peer-reviewed literature.
[00:25:42.420]So I'm kind of, yeah, it's okay.
[00:25:43.770]So we're not addressing your question
[00:25:45.570]Oh Yeah, that's okay. I would prefer.
[00:25:48.702]Same thing at the end.
[00:25:50.802]Say something, I promise I'll answer your question
[00:25:52.320]when you not.
[00:25:54.751]I think one of the things I was really thinking about
[00:25:57.840]for this course is, you know, they're coming in as,
[00:26:01.500]I mean, I went to college when I was 17.
[00:26:04.779]So 17 to 19 years old.
[00:26:06.509]One of the fundamentals is I didn't know what science was,
[00:26:09.840]and I had no significant prior knowledge.
[00:26:12.360]So you're reading a scientific article at 17
[00:26:16.350]is a big ask.
[00:26:19.170]Without that prior knowledge, I was, you know,
[00:26:21.540]how are you engaging to kind of overcome
[00:26:25.050]that sort of mountain.
[00:26:28.177]You know, as opposed to bringing them in as a sophomore
[00:26:30.090]or a junior when they can have a little bit more foundation.
[00:26:34.890]Just the topic knowledge that they're going to encounter.
[00:26:37.320]Right, yeah, and I think of our goals as not like,
[00:26:40.020]I don't expect them to sit down
[00:26:41.640]and read a whole peer reviewed article related to flooding
[00:26:46.650]or something and get all of it.
[00:26:48.480]But I think what we're trying to get them to understand
[00:26:51.360]is like even if you're not an expert in a certain field,
[00:26:54.390]if you understand how literature works a little bit,
[00:26:57.270]you can get a sense for what the evidence is.
[00:27:01.650]You can get a sense for what the main points
[00:27:04.110]are in the article and you can get a little bit out of it.
[00:27:07.680]So I think that's what we're kind of aiming for.
[00:27:10.110]And we teach them this thing called journal dissection,
[00:27:12.090]journal article dissection.
[00:27:13.080]That's just like, okay, who wrote it?
[00:27:14.550]Where did it come from? What's the data?
[00:27:17.370]What are the findings?
[00:27:18.870]You know, just trying to teach them some of the like things
[00:27:22.890]that you learn how to do as kind of a graduate student.
[00:27:25.050]It's like getting the piece of information that you need
[00:27:29.730]out of the article rather than understanding
[00:27:31.890]all of the thing at the level you would
[00:27:33.210]if you were reviewing an article in your field
[00:27:34.800]or something like that.
[00:27:35.700]So it's kind of, and I know that is really hard
[00:27:38.490]for intro students, but you know, maybe it's an opening.
[00:27:44.036](audience member speaking softly)
[00:27:45.180]Yeah, oh yeah, for sure.
[00:27:47.647]For sure. yeah.
[00:27:49.950]Based on your schematic,
[00:27:51.210]is there value in identifying the community problem
[00:27:58.380]and working backwards from that?
[00:28:00.270]Yeah, definitely.
[00:28:04.260]Yeah, I think we're, you know, if it was a group
[00:28:08.220]of 20 students I would want to do that,
[00:28:10.800]like go into a community and find a problem
[00:28:12.810]and then we work on it with them.
[00:28:15.870]But with this many students a year,
[00:28:17.910]we can't go with the flow that much, you know,
[00:28:20.550]'cause we're, it's harder to like, we have to catch up
[00:28:23.970]and like understand what the problem, you know,
[00:28:25.230]we have to learn and figure out how to guide the students
[00:28:31.980]and have things prepared.
[00:28:33.810]Otherwise it feels like, you know,
[00:28:34.740]we've got 125 students in the lecture hall, you know,
[00:28:38.460]if we don't know what we're gonna do that day,
[00:28:40.020]it's kind of hard to pivot and discuss or you know, so yeah.
[00:28:46.410]But like I think some of the experiential learning stuff
[00:28:48.360]that they're doing at the end, I'm hoping works
[00:28:49.710]kind of that way that they're going and finding something
[00:28:51.750]and then they're trying to address it through
[00:28:54.000]the structured decision making process
[00:28:55.680]that they do and yeah.
[00:29:01.290]Should I keep going? You guys wanna keep talking?
[00:29:02.940]I can. I'm easy going. I can do (laughs).
[00:29:06.792]So we use social science
[00:29:08.820]to define how we interact with students
[00:29:11.400]and lead them through their education.
[00:29:13.110]Nice. Awesome.
[00:29:14.809]Okay I like that (laughs).
[00:29:17.202]We use science literacy research to inform your teaching.
[00:29:19.680]No, yeah, maybe this is too hard to answer
[00:29:23.460]as scientists too, but I'll tell you what the students say.
[00:29:27.420]So qualitative data is really not fun for slides,
[00:29:30.930]but I've got three slides that will give you
[00:29:33.090]the full picture here.
[00:29:35.520]And I broke it up between students
[00:29:37.320]who did not have really a specific mechanism
[00:29:40.830]where they could say a specific thing
[00:29:42.210]about how science is useful.
[00:29:43.770]So these were students who kind of just said something vague
[00:29:46.401]like, yeah, science makes things better.
[00:29:48.930]And then students who said science can be useful
[00:29:54.090]to make things better in a general way
[00:29:55.590]with this specific issue.
[00:29:56.670]So they could think about specific issues
[00:29:58.770]and that science helped.
[00:29:59.640]But those were kind of vague responses.
[00:30:03.480]And then I'll have two slides where students
[00:30:04.770]had different things they said about particular mechanisms
[00:30:07.230]and I ordered these by frequency.
[00:30:09.150]So a lot of students talked about action so that science
[00:30:14.790]can empower a community to make a change,
[00:30:17.250]even help people know how to act on an issue
[00:30:21.300]or actually even instigate a change,
[00:30:24.180]which I thought was really cool.
[00:30:26.670]Critical thinking, so students who talked about this
[00:30:29.790]sort of resonated with a lot of the things
[00:30:31.590]that we're doing in the class,
[00:30:32.760]like problem solving, decision making.
[00:30:35.100]They would say we could use science to help us
[00:30:37.110]think more clearly about things.
[00:30:40.470]And then a lot of students talked about educating others
[00:30:43.590]or educating themselves how to understand a topic more.
[00:30:50.490]And then there were students who talked about technology
[00:30:55.230]as a way to support their communities and improve things
[00:30:59.370]on particular issues.
[00:31:01.380]And then students who talked about specific studies
[00:31:04.830]or pieces of information that are needed for decision making
[00:31:07.350]in society.
[00:31:08.910]And then there were a small number of students
[00:31:10.170]who said things that like,
[00:31:11.520]science tells us what stance we should have.
[00:31:14.460]This is sort of like this idea of scientism,
[00:31:17.010]we think of this as sort of maybe not a desirable way
[00:31:19.710]of thinking about it, that science has all the answers
[00:31:21.360]and tells us what we should think kind of a answer.
[00:31:23.580]So we're hoping to have less of those over time,
[00:31:26.880]but one thing that I think was really encouraging to me
[00:31:30.570]is that I think, you know,
[00:31:32.610]some of the frameworks out there in science ed
[00:31:34.290]kind of focus on the role of science in society
[00:31:37.710]in terms of technology and specific studies
[00:31:40.320]and maybe for educating people generally.
[00:31:42.060]But I think these kinds of things were kind of new for us
[00:31:45.150]in our study.
[00:31:45.990]Like students who really thought about science
[00:31:48.750]as being part of this larger way
[00:31:52.140]that we're defining science literacy,
[00:31:55.170]like that science is important for empowering communities
[00:31:57.870]and science is important for helping us do decision making
[00:32:01.020]and thinking about problem solving.
[00:32:04.020]And so I think that's kind of neat that there recognizing
[00:32:09.120]the need for their own science education to help them
[00:32:12.660]do these things, to empower communities
[00:32:16.560]and do some problem solving and educating others as well.
[00:32:23.370]So moving on through the research questions.
[00:32:26.280]So we looked at students' science identity
[00:32:29.790]and perceived cohesion with the community that they chose.
[00:32:33.360]And we found positive relationships between these things.
[00:32:35.580]So students who had higher science identity
[00:32:38.010]had higher science civic engagement.
[00:32:40.920]And those who reported higher cohesion
[00:32:42.810]within a, the community that they chose
[00:32:45.360]also had higher science civic engagement.
[00:32:48.600]So I think this helps us build up sort of an idea
[00:32:51.450]for a model of science civic engagement,
[00:32:54.120]which includes this idea that the more cohesiveness
[00:32:59.820]they feel with the community, maybe the more
[00:33:01.710]they can see themselves playing a role in that community
[00:33:04.290]in terms of civic engagement.
[00:33:07.050]But maybe community cohesion and scientific engagement
[00:33:10.650]might be mutually influencing each other.
[00:33:12.510]So students who are already more engaged in communities
[00:33:18.150]maybe feel more scientific engagement
[00:33:20.220]and people who have scientific engagement
[00:33:21.930]and do something in a community that might increase
[00:33:24.180]their scientific engagement.
[00:33:26.460]Maybe there's some positive feedback in those things.
[00:33:31.050]And science identity I think is really
[00:33:33.060]kind of an interesting one.
[00:33:34.110]And when looking in the literature,
[00:33:35.790]there's evidence that generally as people's identity
[00:33:41.010]develops through adolescents, they're more likely
[00:33:43.950]to be engaged specifically just in general.
[00:33:47.100]And there's also evidence around specific contexts
[00:33:49.500]like students as they develop
[00:33:52.770]those with a stronger environmental identity are more likely
[00:33:57.270]to be engaged in environmentally focused civic engagement.
[00:34:00.960]And so we were finding a similar thing that students
[00:34:04.500]who see themselves as science kind of people can more likely
[00:34:09.060]see the application of science skills and knowledge
[00:34:11.730]to everyday life.
[00:34:13.200]But I think there's actually some nuance and complexity here
[00:34:15.720]that we didn't uncover with our data.
[00:34:19.380]When you look at a study that surveyed
[00:34:22.080]thousands of students in the United States,
[00:34:24.360]they compared STEM and non-STEM students and found that
[00:34:28.380]non-STEM students actually had higher
[00:34:30.900]civic social action agency.
[00:34:34.710]So non-STEM students were actually more likely to say
[00:34:37.290]that they were interested in leadership
[00:34:39.270]and change within their communities and social justice
[00:34:42.420]type issues and things like that.
[00:34:44.340]And then pairing that with some qualitative work
[00:34:48.300]and some papers that I read looked at like,
[00:34:51.510]middle school and high school students
[00:34:53.010]who were historically underrepresented students of color
[00:34:55.740]in a science and technology academy.
[00:34:59.010]And qualitatively in talking with these students,
[00:35:01.110]the students would report feeling a disconnect
[00:35:04.410]between STEM culture and values.
[00:35:08.850]And this feeling like if they were gonna move
[00:35:11.010]into STEM fields, it might mean disconnecting a little bit
[00:35:13.950]with their communities and giving up the opportunity
[00:35:17.250]to help their communities because they see STEM
[00:35:20.340]as sort of distinct or even hostile towards the communities
[00:35:23.700]that they came from.
[00:35:24.750]So I think this kind of shines a light in thinking about
[00:35:29.760]our STEM training culture and values and things
[00:35:35.190]that we can do to try to make sure that we're being aware
[00:35:40.380]of the culture that exists in STEM training
[00:35:43.260]and really our students are sort of limited in terms
[00:35:47.640]of just thinking about CASNR students
[00:35:49.140]that maybe are coming from communities
[00:35:51.480]that have a lot more alignment between their values
[00:35:54.480]and culture and history with science values
[00:35:56.580]and culture and history.
[00:35:57.413]I find that many of the students in my class
[00:35:59.730]have very pro-science attitudes,
[00:36:02.640]even those who are non-science.
[00:36:05.610]And lately I've been having lots of conversations
[00:36:07.500]with people on campus thinking about doing more community
[00:36:11.310]engaged science and creating graduate training programs
[00:36:13.830]that include elements of community engaged science
[00:36:15.690]and really training graduate students to think about science
[00:36:18.510]as actively going to communities and figuring out
[00:36:23.070]what needs they have and working towards solving those needs
[00:36:26.160]and that maybe could bridge some of the disconnect
[00:36:28.350]between some communities and science.
[00:36:33.720]So anyways, this is ongoing research
[00:36:35.190]and our research I think has one little slice
[00:36:38.790]of the full picture, but we're developing these ideas.
[00:36:46.050]And then the last research question was looking at,
[00:36:48.510]do students science civic engagement increase in SCIL 101?
[00:36:52.200]And we found increases in civic knowledge,
[00:36:57.240]but not in civic action or efficacy
[00:37:00.840]and a small actual decrease in civic values.
[00:37:04.170]And so we're still working on this and thinking about
[00:37:07.200]what it means, but I think one thing it means
[00:37:09.750]is that knowledge is something that's easier
[00:37:11.700]to do in classrooms and it's a little bit harder
[00:37:14.280]to instill civic values or civic action or willingness.
[00:37:21.420]And maybe that requires more actual, you know,
[00:37:25.560]real work with communities and more opportunities
[00:37:28.230]embedded within the real world to kind of boost
[00:37:32.910]specific action, civic efficacy and civic values
[00:37:35.700]aspects of this.
[00:37:37.590]And this resonates with other data, with other instruments
[00:37:39.960]that we've collected in the class as well.
[00:37:41.550]So I think that's also kind of interesting except for,
[00:37:45.930]we did several years ago use a different instrument
[00:37:50.340]that was civic attitudes and skills questionnaire.
[00:37:53.340]This was in fall 2016 in a paper that's been published
[00:37:56.520]that has a bunch of other qualitative work
[00:37:58.140]and stuff like that if you're interested
[00:38:00.240]and in this context we did find some increases
[00:38:03.420]in interpersonal and problem solving, political awareness,
[00:38:06.330]and social justice attributes between pre and post.
[00:38:11.370]So we're still trying to figure out what students
[00:38:14.040]are learning and we need to do some more,
[00:38:15.510]I think especially qualitative work.
[00:38:17.580]And this also raises the questions too.
[00:38:19.470]Like one course is not enough.
[00:38:22.320]I think this is stuff that students need to do
[00:38:24.600]through a whole program or major or multiple courses
[00:38:27.480]or through their own engagement.
[00:38:30.630]But we are thinking about how do we make it better
[00:38:33.450]in SCIL 101.
[00:38:35.010]So flipping back to talking about
[00:38:36.210]how am I doing, about the course.
[00:38:38.970]In 2021, we received a Holling Innovation Award.
[00:38:42.210]Christine Haney-Douglass and I
[00:38:43.350]have been working on this together.
[00:38:44.640]She's my partner in crime, especially regarding
[00:38:47.310]the experiential learning components.
[00:38:49.170]And so we in 2021 started the process of making it required
[00:38:55.440]for the students when they pick their topic
[00:38:56.880]to do four to six hours of experiential learning.
[00:38:59.910]This fall we started the experiential learning
[00:39:03.930]right at the very beginning of the semester
[00:39:05.250]instead of waiting for the last bit of a course.
[00:39:07.680]And we emphasized it a lot more
[00:39:10.260]and I think it went really, really well.
[00:39:13.710]I was excited about some of the things
[00:39:15.390]that the students did.
[00:39:16.830]And so this week I looked at what everyone did this fall
[00:39:20.130]and tried to stick it on a slide for you all
[00:39:22.650]so you can kind of get a sense of what happened.
[00:39:25.500]Everything in red are UNL entities.
[00:39:27.420]Everything in black are ones outside of campus.
[00:39:31.650]And I wanted to give a shout out to agro and hort folks
[00:39:34.020]who did some cool things with our students,
[00:39:35.700]including Stacy Adams to give the tour
[00:39:39.210]of the hydroponic greenhouses.
[00:39:41.760]Ellen Paparozzi did greenhouses with hemp,
[00:39:45.990]students that were interested in thinking about
[00:39:47.460]marijuana legalization.
[00:39:49.890]Aaron Daigh worked with students on nitrate leaching
[00:39:53.610]and Terri James gave a tour of the backyard farmer.
[00:39:55.860]So I think that's really great.
[00:39:57.180]And I think what we're gonna do next
[00:39:58.980]is try to give a little bit more coordinated effort
[00:40:02.910]to get students hooked up with potential opportunities
[00:40:05.760]that are out there, so if you guys know of things
[00:40:07.980]that the students can do,
[00:40:10.230]or projects that are ongoing where you could use
[00:40:13.500]four to five students coming by for a few hours,
[00:40:16.500]I would be very excited to put you on our list
[00:40:19.770]of pre-approved partners.
[00:40:22.230]So we're hoping to have things set up that the students
[00:40:25.050]can select from where they know they can contact a person
[00:40:27.630]and that person knows what's going on.
[00:40:29.850]And can help them through this process.
[00:40:36.334]And I think these also work the best when students
[00:40:39.510]are volunteering or doing some service too.
[00:40:42.360]I think that makes it a little bit more
[00:40:44.400]of a mutualistic relationship.
[00:40:46.320]It doesn't have to be that,
[00:40:47.153]but I think that can work really well.
[00:40:49.500]Students did amazing things.
[00:40:50.640]Like they had a veterinarian at the Henry Doorly Zoo
[00:40:52.740]give them a tour.
[00:40:54.120]They went to Nine Mile Prairie with Dave Wedin.
[00:40:56.460]They served food at the People City Mission.
[00:41:02.610]They volunteered to help be the match, find donors.
[00:41:08.850]They did some really, really cool things.
[00:41:10.813]I was very proud of them
[00:41:12.840]and I'm hoping that some students really valued this.
[00:41:17.610]when I talked to students in the poster session,
[00:41:19.530]if they thought this was worthwhile without a fail,
[00:41:21.960]even the students who all they did was just talk
[00:41:23.540]to a faculty member about their work,
[00:41:25.410]they said, yeah, that was really good that was helpful.
[00:41:27.150]So I think it was worth it to do this and the students
[00:41:30.390]valued it too.
[00:41:32.460]Okay, just so just kind of wrap up and then we can just chat
[00:41:34.650]if you'd like.
[00:41:35.880]We're working on developing this conceptual model
[00:41:37.590]to better understand how students can develop this idea
[00:41:40.740]of community level science literacy.
[00:41:44.280]And we're also trying to figure out
[00:41:45.870]how do we do it better in our class.
[00:41:48.720]And we really appreciate all of your engagement
[00:41:51.930]in science Literacy 101.
[00:41:52.803]I'll also mention we have a bunch of different instructors,
[00:41:55.920]it's not just me.
[00:41:57.210]And that includes Meghan Sindelar will be joining
[00:41:59.580]the instructor team starting I think next year.
[00:42:02.880]And we have other instructors in other departments
[00:42:06.120]across INR, it's not just me.
[00:42:08.640]And we also get lots of learning assistants,
[00:42:11.610]graduate students, postdocs, and also undergraduate students
[00:42:14.430]from all across campus who are absolutely crucial
[00:42:17.250]for this course to work.
[00:42:18.420]And we've gotten a lot of LA's from agro and hort
[00:42:20.490]and I really appreciate that as well.
[00:42:23.340]So thank you for inviting me and I'm happy to chat,
[00:42:27.150]ask questions, whatever you'd like
[00:42:32.256]That's it. Just so Yeah.
[00:42:37.290]Right. Do we have any questions?
[00:42:41.156]I had a couple of questions.
[00:42:42.000]One in your paragraph histogram.
[00:42:47.760]Oh yeah. You showed increases
[00:42:50.910]in knowledge post taking the class
[00:42:55.140]or no, the other one with the, that one, yeah.
[00:42:58.410]Yeah.
[00:43:00.780]Everything went up except diversity.
[00:43:03.600]So what do you mean by diversity?
[00:43:06.330]Was that the lost and appreciation for diversity
[00:43:11.430]in our population or did they, the students in the class
[00:43:17.340]become more or less diverse?
[00:43:19.710]No, this is more like an appreciation of human diversity
[00:43:24.480]went down not significantly.
[00:43:26.370]I don't know why social justice went up.
[00:43:28.800]This semester we had, I'm trying to remember,
[00:43:32.160]there were different modules that we did that semester
[00:43:35.610]that included food insecurity and prairie dogs and biofuels
[00:43:42.150]and maybe water conservation, I think were the four.
[00:43:43.890]So some of it might have to do with the modules that we did.
[00:43:47.280]I was really sad to see
[00:43:49.500]Maybe you need to ask different questions.
[00:43:52.890]I'm serious.
[00:43:53.723]I'm glad. Social justice.
[00:43:54.990]That goes along with your comment about the model.
[00:43:58.710]The other thing is much more specific.
[00:44:02.010]I'm very familiar with the Southern Heights Food Forest.
[00:44:05.400]How were your students involved with that?
[00:44:09.060]Or what was the interaction there?
[00:44:10.897]You know, so that wasn't in my lecture section.
[00:44:15.072]I'm trying to remember. I don't recall.
[00:44:18.540]It was definitely a group that I think went
[00:44:19.950]and did something there, but I don't remember what it was.
[00:44:22.020]I think there might have been some volunteering
[00:44:24.540]that happened there.
[00:44:25.410]I can let you know if you want afterwards
[00:44:27.810]who the person was that they contacted.
[00:44:30.870]But I don't recall because since it wasn't in my lecture,
[00:44:33.300]all I did was put it on a spreadsheet recently.
[00:44:37.590]Thanks. Yeah. Thank you.
[00:44:43.530]Thank you very much Jenny for your seminar.
[00:44:47.700]You know, I think what you do in SCIL
[00:44:51.420]is really having the students to think systematically
[00:44:55.320]and really thinking about the science and how that science
[00:45:01.230]could be useful to their community.
[00:45:03.630]I'm just wondering, you know,
[00:45:05.640]if the students come in and then they just put a check mark,
[00:45:09.060]I took SCIL 101 as my requirement
[00:45:11.910]and how do we as a group of educators think about
[00:45:16.200]repeating this across, you know, the thread across,
[00:45:20.700]you know, as they reach the capstone course,
[00:45:23.460]they have this toolbox.
[00:45:24.840]How do we do that so it's not just one thing
[00:45:28.260]they do in their freshman year and they're done.
[00:45:30.630]So could you share some thoughts with us?
[00:45:34.200]Yeah, I'm happy to think about best ways to do that too,
[00:45:37.590]depending on what everyone might be interested in.
[00:45:40.320]And one great start is having me come talk to your unit
[00:45:43.470]about the class I think that's helpful
[00:45:45.540]to just get a chance to talk to people about it.
[00:45:49.230]I'm always happy to talk with people about what we're doing.
[00:45:53.970]I'm happy to have instructors rotate in too,
[00:45:56.970]if that's something that's possible.
[00:45:58.980]'Cause then you can see what's going on.
[00:46:00.360]I think it's also really hard to, you know,
[00:46:01.800]like interpret stuff based on what you hear
[00:46:06.960]about the course versus when you're actually teaching it.
[00:46:09.360]Then you're like, oh, I see what's going, you know.
[00:46:13.560]One of the things I talked about with Tiffany this morning.
[00:46:16.230]I'm wanna form like a board of directors for the course
[00:46:18.990]so I can have more people thinking about
[00:46:23.760]these connections across different units
[00:46:25.920]and think about how to make sure the course is high value
[00:46:28.200]for everybody and think about problems like,
[00:46:32.070]should it be freshmen or should we think about sophomores
[00:46:35.280]or, you know, and should we double down even more
[00:46:38.520]on the experiential learning or pull back
[00:46:40.620]on some of the part of it.
[00:46:41.453]You know, I really value other people's perspectives
[00:46:44.160]on that.
[00:46:47.190]Yeah, I mean, so far it's mostly been people
[00:46:50.010]who are interested that come to me
[00:46:51.090]and then we talk a little bit about
[00:46:52.380]how they might incorporate things.
[00:46:53.850]If anyone has any suggestions about better ways of,
[00:46:58.980]you know, letting everyone know the things
[00:47:00.420]that we're doing, I'm happy to do that.
[00:47:02.310]We have some of our materials posted
[00:47:03.780]on a CAS webpage so people can look at the materials
[00:47:07.200]that we're using if they're interested, but yeah.
[00:47:10.890]I know for at least when I taught one of my courses,
[00:47:14.310]I used elements.
[00:47:16.710]When I taught 366, I used elements of decision making
[00:47:20.190]for students to, and Meghan does that now.
[00:47:24.193]She's sort of modified it,
[00:47:25.770]so my question is that how could we use, you know,
[00:47:28.983]it's like scientific writing, right?
[00:47:31.950]If we were to do that in each of our classes,
[00:47:34.320]in a way that's repetition, right?
[00:47:38.131]And that changes into mastery, competency,
[00:47:41.010]confidence and all that.
[00:47:42.420]So that's my question.
[00:47:43.800]What are some of the elements that where we could
[00:47:47.070]do some pilot of mid-level course and capstone course
[00:47:52.170]and is that a possibility or is that something
[00:47:54.960]we can think about?
[00:47:57.230]Yeah I would love to think about that some more.
[00:47:58.980]And one of the things we could probably share too
[00:48:00.600]is sort of like the rubrics that we use for students too.
[00:48:03.690]And like when they're needing to look at evidence
[00:48:08.640]and synthesize what it means.
[00:48:11.550]We have ways that we are, you know,
[00:48:14.700]looking for how well they're doing.
[00:48:16.200]The sense making that I think are working pretty well
[00:48:18.030]in the course.
[00:48:20.100]That might be something that would be helpful to share
[00:48:22.110]with people so they can kind of see how we're doing it.
[00:48:24.390]I mean the structured decision making framework I think
[00:48:26.670]can be used for lots of different things.
[00:48:29.182]I think you can elevate certain parts of it,
[00:48:30.600]you can use it, I think in truncated ways.
[00:48:33.450]So it's a little less complex.
[00:48:37.230]And I definitely think the evidence evaluation part of it,
[00:48:40.170]and using peer reviewed literature,
[00:48:42.930]I think I would love to be able to talk with people
[00:48:48.390]about what they're doing and think about how,
[00:48:51.000]and I can learn from what you all are doing as well
[00:48:53.310]and maybe incorporate some other things that would be useful
[00:48:55.350]to people in subsequent classes.
[00:48:59.070]So yeah, I'm happy to talk more about that.
[00:49:05.400]So just to follow up a little bit more on Martha's point,
[00:49:07.950]and then I guess when I derailed your question earlier on
[00:49:13.230]with talking really about what I was thinking
[00:49:17.220]of science literacy meaning the ability to, you know,
[00:49:21.810]to write and read and all that.
[00:49:24.000]So the more you talk, the more I felt
[00:49:25.950]that this was more about how to do civic engagement
[00:49:31.470]and relate your relate science to a broader community, but.
[00:49:38.162]It can be both The way, you know,
[00:49:40.800]how much of it is kind of an introversion to what
[00:49:44.310]Christine's course teaches, that kind of thing.
[00:49:47.340]And how much more would you like to go in that direction
[00:49:51.390]because you know, then we can maybe have like the tentacles
[00:49:57.600]of SCIL 101 come out into a whole variety
[00:50:01.530]of different courses and you know, this is,
[00:50:05.400]you know, this is what you're gonna take later on,
[00:50:07.740]but you know, this is a little taste of what you might learn
[00:50:10.460]in SCIL 101 in action.
[00:50:12.960]Or maybe they're gonna, you know, take SCIL 101 first
[00:50:17.790]and then use those skills right after, you know.
[00:50:22.654]Or the sequence makes a difference.
[00:50:24.300]Right, yeah, I mean I think,
[00:50:27.750]the term science literacy is a very broad umbrella
[00:50:30.120]first of all, just to say, I think there's a lot of things
[00:50:32.100]that fit into it.
[00:50:33.630]And the stuff I talked about today
[00:50:35.280]I think is community level science literacy.
[00:50:37.530]But I also think about individual level science literacy
[00:50:39.750]that is sort of like, you know, more individual process,
[00:50:42.930]like includes being able to read and to write
[00:50:47.190]and to formulate an argument in a science scientific way.
[00:50:50.640]But I think it also includes perspective taking
[00:50:54.840]and some things about understanding limitations
[00:50:59.310]and affordances of science and, you know, some other things
[00:51:03.090]as well besides what we think of as traditional
[00:51:05.970]skills of scientists.
[00:51:07.470]So I think there are a lot of things,
[00:51:10.800]and I do feel like our class is very much an intro
[00:51:13.080]to a lot of different things that could be built upon.
[00:51:16.350]But I do like the idea, I mean,
[00:51:18.360]the students are doing a lot of writing in the class.
[00:51:20.970]I mean for each lecture we have at least
[00:51:23.580]four learning assistants, and I use them very heavily.
[00:51:27.000]I get my money's worth out of them (laughs).
[00:51:31.890]So they're grading, it's a lot of open-ended and writing
[00:51:34.620]things that the students do.
[00:51:38.422]And it's really hard for the students,
[00:51:39.780]I think they're not used to this level of writing at all.
[00:51:44.010]And I think we have ways of, usually the first time
[00:51:47.550]they have to do it, they do not do well,
[00:51:50.730]and then we build them back up and then they're doing better
[00:51:54.210]by the end and starting to understand a little bit more.
[00:51:56.310]But at first they don't even understand what we're asking
[00:51:58.380]for in terms of putting together an argument
[00:52:02.100]that makes sense, and like references,
[00:52:07.050]evidence from a peer reviewed literature, you know,
[00:52:09.000]and it's just like a couple sentences we're asking for,
[00:52:11.430]you know, not a lot of stuff, but, so I think,
[00:52:16.860]yeah, it would be great to work with Christine
[00:52:18.390]a little bit more too and see some of her experiences are.
[00:52:21.932](audience member speaking softly)
[00:52:23.709]I noticed how many sophomore I have in my class
[00:52:26.730]this semester.
[00:52:28.050]And what I should do is really is compare how well they did,
[00:52:32.220]but you know, reviewing the literature
[00:52:35.670]in that experimental report between freshmen
[00:52:38.700]and people who've already taken SCIL 101.
[00:52:41.670]Yeah, that would be interesting.
[00:52:43.329]Yeah, we can do that.
[00:52:46.467]Can I tag on something
[00:52:47.760]real quick Martha?
[00:52:49.380]Just to follow up on what you say Jenny.
[00:52:51.180]So I've been having, so I teach multiple writing courses.
[00:52:55.800]I teach one in agronomy and horticulture
[00:52:58.080]at the sophomore level.
[00:53:01.590]Yes. Sorry.
[00:53:03.210]I'm from South Africa, this junior, senior, sophomore
[00:53:07.746]in almost a decade and a half.
[00:53:09.687]And I'm still struggling.
[00:53:12.420]We have first, second, third, fourth years
[00:53:14.160]that's, you know, easy.
[00:53:16.650]Anyway, so we teach this, it's technical writing
[00:53:19.680]at the sophomore level.
[00:53:21.480]And without fail the students do not read the instructions.
[00:53:32.580]And then they, you know, they struggle.
[00:53:36.300]They don't want to read.
[00:53:37.530]And as we all know, reading is a prerequisite of writing
[00:53:41.850]and they just simply do not want to read.
[00:53:45.570]And so, you know, we also have this element, right?
[00:53:48.630]We require them, they have to use evidence, you know,
[00:53:51.600]based citation to, you know, make their arguments,
[00:53:57.600]but then they work with their own data set
[00:54:00.330]and they come to their own conclusions
[00:54:02.280]after looking at the data set.
[00:54:03.420]But to set up the argument, right, they have to look at.
[00:54:06.330]And we're assuming and I think reasonably so,
[00:54:12.420]that they've already taken
[00:54:15.690]some of these introductory courses like SCIL 101
[00:54:18.510]and some of the English courses, which I know,
[00:54:21.030]you know, cover citation and that type of thing.
[00:54:25.016]But it is astounding to me how many of those students
[00:54:29.250]really struggle with that.
[00:54:32.670]And so it's hard to keep, I would say more than 50%
[00:54:36.840]of the class are really, really struggling with that.
[00:54:41.310]And I would say probably 75% of the class don't wanna read.
[00:54:46.410]And so it's really an uphill battle
[00:54:50.340]because we have such diversity and variety,
[00:54:54.270]you know, with that.
[00:54:56.850]But we all wanna get them, you know,
[00:54:59.610]to a place where they can write something productive.
[00:55:04.320]And giving that feedback to them is very time intensive,
[00:55:09.060]as I'm sure you are aware.
[00:55:12.097]And it's more than just having them write,
[00:55:16.200]it's a part of it, but writing on only gets them so far
[00:55:20.340]because they have to, you know, start moving away
[00:55:26.070]from some of, you know, writing like as they're thinking
[00:55:30.060]and writing more structurally, writing more technically.
[00:55:33.600]And it's just a very labor intensive endeavor.
[00:55:39.000]And so there are just many challenges associated with that.
[00:55:42.810]And so I was wondering with your course,
[00:55:45.510]because you focus more on the reading,
[00:55:47.700]we have to just out of time constraint,
[00:55:50.760]we have to assume that they already have a reasonable basis
[00:55:56.400]in the reading and the development of the reading skill.
[00:55:59.520]But I was wondering if you could just say a little bit more
[00:56:02.400]of what's your experience been with that, you know.
[00:56:06.810]How do you see them doing and how do you support them
[00:56:09.900]with that so that, you know, from our perspective,
[00:56:13.380]that we can also know what is the best thing
[00:56:16.680]to do with our course.
[00:56:17.640]You know, do we cut the writing pieces a little bit
[00:56:20.400]and focus more on the reading?
[00:56:21.990]Is that really what they need?
[00:56:23.970]We can do a little bit less, right. You know?
[00:56:27.023]That kind of thing, and that also goes into the curriculum
[00:56:30.000]building piece a little bit
[00:56:32.730]Yeah, when I first started teaching this class,
[00:56:36.120]and we were doing the structured decision making thing,
[00:56:37.857]and they had to like basically,
[00:56:39.690]in the structured decision making,
[00:56:40.920]there's these four alternatives.
[00:56:42.600]So like in the plastic pollution,
[00:56:45.030]one might be ban plastic bags, and then there's other ones,
[00:56:48.690]and then there might be different objectives.
[00:56:50.610]And one might be, we wanna reduce harm to wildlife.
[00:56:53.430]So they're in this matrix, they're looking at one place
[00:56:56.790]and they have to look at what does the evidence say?
[00:56:59.790]Like if, does the evidence say if we ban plastic bags,
[00:57:02.670]are we gonna actually reduce harm to wildlife?
[00:57:05.670]And so they have to look at the evidence
[00:57:07.980]about how much plastic bags are out there,
[00:57:10.380]or do turtles mistake plastic bags and try to eat them
[00:57:13.020]more than other kinds of plastic, whatever, and so.
[00:57:15.912]And in the past, early on I was just like, okay,
[00:57:18.780]students go find the information, bye-bye,
[00:57:20.880]see me at the end, once you've made sense of it,
[00:57:23.940]and written a thing, and now we're not doing it quite like
[00:57:28.950]that anymore.
[00:57:29.783]Now we're like, here's a bunch of the evidence.
[00:57:32.100]And we talk about it in lecture and we give them papers
[00:57:36.247]and support them a little bit more
[00:57:39.630]and we say, find one paper that's relevant
[00:57:42.750]just to this question.
[00:57:44.070]And so they have to find just one thing,
[00:57:46.770]and it's hard, they have struggled even just finding
[00:57:48.720]one relevant piece of information.
[00:57:51.570]And then in their writing they have to use the evidence
[00:57:55.860]that we talked about in class
[00:57:56.820]and the papers that we've already given them and then,
[00:57:59.700]and what they found to create an argument.
[00:58:02.400]And then we have a rubric that basically
[00:58:06.540]is how well did they incorporate the evidence
[00:58:08.190]in their reasoning and how well did they incorporate
[00:58:10.980]in their writing and how relevant was the evidence
[00:58:13.650]and things like that, that's what we're looking at.
[00:58:16.800]And then that scaffolding kind of drops off as we go on.
[00:58:19.350]They have to do that for more things in the middle
[00:58:21.540]of the unit and then by the end in the final project,
[00:58:23.730]they're all on their own for finding
[00:58:25.140]the information and making sense of it.
[00:58:27.900]So I think they do need like thinking about
[00:58:35.340]what are the baby steps?
[00:58:36.210]I think so like helping them and thinking about
[00:58:38.760]what's realistic for them to be able to do.
[00:58:40.710]And I think, I wish we had more time
[00:58:45.660]because I feel like there's a lot more
[00:58:47.460]that we could do with the students
[00:58:48.690]in terms of how to make sense of literature, how to extract
[00:58:52.650]the relevant parts or how to find the relevant things.
[00:58:55.500]We have that in there in the course,
[00:58:57.540]but I think the degree to which students
[00:59:00.660]get what we're trying to teach them I think
[00:59:02.640]is hit and miss a little bit.
[00:59:05.730]But I think, I completely agree. I think writing is thinking
[00:59:08.880]and that we need to, and reading is crucial to writing,
[00:59:13.350]so I think you kind of need both.
[00:59:16.140]But there are a lot of people out there
[00:59:17.790]that do a lot of writing as part of the critical thinking
[00:59:22.560]aspects of their course that might have some,
[00:59:25.950]maybe you probably know you're (chuckles).
[00:59:29.364]So we could probably look to you to think about
[00:59:31.290]some strategies for supporting the students
[00:59:34.380]and writing especially science argumentation stuff.
[00:59:38.580]Yeah.
[00:59:40.260]All right, we should continue this conversation
[00:59:43.590]before the.
[00:59:45.330]I have just one, it's a comment.
[00:59:47.760]Jenny, have you, for those students,
[00:59:50.250]you, you are doing six students a year.
[00:59:54.330]So over the nine years you have had a lot of students,
[00:59:58.410]have you had conversation with those senior students,
[01:00:01.920]for example, students taking a capstone course,
[01:00:05.190]how much they are utilizing what they've learned?
[01:00:08.610]Because sometimes they don't know
[01:00:10.470]what they need at the moment they are taking it.
[01:00:13.350]But fast forward in the time when they've matured
[01:00:17.730]academically, they might say, wait a minute, I'm using this.
[01:00:20.910]And I mean, all of us can say something
[01:00:23.100]about our freshman course and then you know
[01:00:25.710]that you're using it in your life or in your profession.
[01:00:28.290]So have you done any of that?
[01:00:29.753]I would be very curious to know
[01:00:31.620]what the students are thinking.
[01:00:33.090]Yeah and sort I've tried,
[01:00:36.960]I think one of the hard things about learning skills
[01:00:40.050]is that, you know, I think when you learn things
[01:00:42.150]you're like, oh, I didn't know this and now I knew it.
[01:00:44.190]And that's like knowledge, you understand.
[01:00:45.690]But skills are kind of like, I already know how to do this,
[01:00:48.690]and then you learn how to do it, you don't do well,
[01:00:50.760]but then you learn how to do it and you're like,
[01:00:51.960]I always knew how to do that.
[01:00:53.370]You know, you don't really recognize that you learn skills
[01:00:56.820]as much, I think as you maybe learn.
[01:00:58.500]I think that's my personal theory.
[01:00:59.850]It's not based on evidence, but so I don't know.
[01:01:04.516]At one point we tried to send out a survey,
[01:01:06.390]this was several years ago, to ask upperclassmen
[01:01:10.020]about their value in the course.
[01:01:12.030]And that was really hard 'cause we'd only get people
[01:01:13.650]who answered who really hated the course or really loved it.
[01:01:16.050]And it really was perfectly bifurcated
[01:01:18.720]in the responses that we got.
[01:01:20.760]And then anecdotally, some students have told me,
[01:01:24.570]yeah, really like that was one of my favorite classes
[01:01:26.760]and it's really helpful and I think about
[01:01:28.200]the decision making all the time and it was helpful
[01:01:30.900]to know how papers work, you know, and.
[01:01:33.330]But that's just anecdotally and it's also people
[01:01:35.280]talking to me and they know,
[01:01:36.360]maybe they're buttering me up for something, I don't know.
[01:01:38.850]So I mean, I would love to hear that from people
[01:01:41.430]who teach capstone courses.
[01:01:42.840]But I've also met students where they're seniors
[01:01:48.510]and I ask them, you know, about the class,
[01:01:50.520]And they're like, did I take that class?
[01:01:51.960]Like they don't remember anything like, like really?
[01:01:56.480](Jenny laughs)
[01:02:00.540]I would find that to be useful feedback
[01:02:02.280]if people have experiences with that
[01:02:03.990]and they have a sense for that,
[01:02:05.353]I think that would be nice to know, yeah.
[01:02:10.200]Do we have any questions online? Okay. All right.
[01:02:15.844]All right, well, so yes, this is the last seminar
[01:02:20.160]of our seminar series.
[01:02:24.660]Maybe before we get to final orders of business,
[01:02:27.300]thank you again, Jenny, so much.
[01:02:29.220]You're welcome. Thank you.
[01:02:30.640]We really appreciate you coming to join us
[01:02:32.820]on the last day of finals week and 3:30 on a Friday.
[01:02:39.330]So I think we had a great discussion
[01:02:41.490]and thank you all for being here today as well.
[01:02:44.160]Really appreciate your time.
[01:02:46.620]So yes, this is our final seminar of this semester.
[01:02:50.550]Seminar will start back up the first week of February,
[01:02:53.940]if I have that correct.
[01:02:56.340]And then we will be moving to a new time next semester.
[01:02:59.400]So we're moving away from the Friday, 3:30 time,
[01:03:02.820]and it will be moving to Thursdays at 11:00 AM.
[01:03:07.020]So we welcome you all back next semester at 11:00 AM
[01:03:11.370]on Thursday, first week of February.
[01:03:14.310]Right, thank you so much. Have a wonderful break.
[01:03:16.170]Happy holidays everyone. Thank you, Jenny.
[01:03:19.330](audience applauds)

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Experiential Learning and Community Engagement in SCIL 101

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