Visual Modeling as a Pedagogical Strategy in a Nutritional Physiology Animal Science Course (1:00-1:15pm)
Ciana M. Bowhay
Tennessee Technological University

Nutritional physiology includes complex biological and biochemical processes that can be difficult for students to grasp. Visual modeling is used extensively in courses like physics and chemistry but remains underutilized as a science process skill in biological sciences. Creating visual models helps to make learning visible and simplify complex concepts, thus enabling learners to develop self-explanations and visualize interactions between components of complex systems. We believe that incorporating visual modeling in Animal Nutrition will aid students in describing and deepening comprehension of physiological processes like nutrient digestion and utilization. A learning activity was prepared where students (n = 376) created hand-drawn diagrams of nutrient digestion, absorption, and utilization in several livestock species. We then collected student surveys and reflections, incorporating their feedback to revise future iterations using a Design-Based Research approach. Creating visual models of nutrient digestion, absorption, and utilization in livestock species promoted students’ comprehension, confidence, and ability to integrate and apply course concepts. While constructing diagrams of digestive processes enhanced these metrics during the first iteration of this project, adding a writing component to the activity in iteration 2 (n = 168) increased its effectiveness. Creating visual models of nutrient digestion helped to make the imperceptible visible, while generating written explanations of their drawings required students to articulate thought processes and make direct comparisons using their diagrams. When students were required to create a visual model of digestion and then use it to support their written explanation comparing digestion and metabolism between animal species, their confidence and proficiency in retaining and explaining complex nutritional concepts and making inferences across species increased. Incorporation of similar learning activities in accordance with dual coding theory that include both creating visual models and written explanations will likely be beneficial in enhancing student learning in other biological science or physiology courses.

Career Development and Networking From the Classroom: an Experiment with Skin in the Game (1:15-1:30pm)
Anthony R. Delmond
University of Tennessee at Martin

Convincing agricultural business students at a small, rural university to actively engage in professional social media can seem an uphill battle. In an increasingly digital and interconnected world, however, employers rely more heavily on digital media skills each year. Large agribusinesses like Bayer, Tyson, and John Deere have embraced social media and expect recent graduates to be well-versed in the communication media of their generation. If students' career prospects rely on savvy social media use, it is the duty of agricultural business programs to incorporate education about the responsible use of those tools into the curriculum. In this study, students in multiple classes developed LinkedIn profiles with incrementally stricter rubrics and requirements to determine how emphases on specific components could nudge them to improve their professional online presence. In particular, the assignment required students to connect with other LinkedIn users outside of the university network (i.e., not professors, friends, or alumni of their university). Different treatments required varying numbers of connections. This external review put students' 'skin in the game," since their public profiles would be scrutinized by real-world businesspeople and potential employers. Rather than having the desired effect, preliminary results indicate that overall, the quality of students' LinkedIn profiles was actually lower when the assignment required external connections. Those results are driven by a larger proportion of students not completing the assignment when external connections were required. This indicates that rather than put skin in the game, more students are opting not to play when the stakes are higher.

Mentoring From Women Leaders Inspires Undergraduate Women in a Summer Agricultural Research Program (1:30-1:45pm)
Joseph L. Donaldson
North Carolina State University

Colleges and universities, particularly land-grant institutions, are influencers for women in STEM. In particular, women mentors, faculty, and academic advisors positively influence women students' STEM career choices and persistence. Researchers point to social belongingness (where women select careers fields represented by women) and self-efficacy (the belief that one can succeed in a chosen field) as motivating factors for women to succeed in STEM academic and career pursuits. This study describes Explore BiGG (bioinformatics, genetics, and genomic sciences) Data, a summer research program for women undergraduates designed to increase the BiGG workforce and enhance women's participation in food, agricultural, and natural resource careers. In 2020 and 2021, Explore BiGG Data had 14 total participants, referred to as Scholars. Scholars completed an 8-week research experience alongside women scientists, faculty mentors, and graduate students to develop their research abilities, gain leadership skills, and explore BiGG academic and career pathways. This convergent, mixed-methods study involved collecting and analyzing survey and interview data, and researchers merged and compared findings from these qualitative and quantitative strands. A major theme identified was that mentoring from women leaders helped the Scholars to conceptualize themselves as STEM leaders and set academic and career goals. Additionally, the influence of women leaders increased Scholars' confidence as researchers. It is imperative that career development programs connect women undergraduates with women faculty to foster women undergraduates' self-efficacy and social belongingness in food, agricultural, and natural resource careers. Furthermore, career development programs should emphasize leadership and mentoring in the context of research skills.

Does Academic Goal Orientation Predict Academic Achievement in Large Undergraduate Agriculture Courses? (1:45-2:00pm)
Christopher Estepp
University of Arkansas

Academic goal orientation theory posits that students bring three goal orientations to their courses. Students with a mastery orientation seek to learn and become competent, those with a performance-approach orientation seek to outperform their classmates, and those with a performance-avoidance orientation seek to avoid failure. The purpose of this study was to determine if students' academic goal orientations were related to course performance as indicated by final course averages. Following IRB approval, students (n = 394) in six randomly selected, large enrollment (< 50 students), undergraduate agriculture courses completed an academic goal orientation survey at the beginning of the semester and provided permission for instructors to report their final course averages at the end of the semester. The mean final course average was 87.8% (SD = 13.0%). On a 1 to 5 summated Likert scale, students reported the highest mean for mastery (M = 3.96, SD = 0.58), followed by performance-avoidance (M = 3.36, SD = 0.84) and performance-approach (M = 3.20, SD = 0.80) goal orientations. When classified by primary goal orientation, 60.9% had a mastery orientation, 29.4% had a performance-avoidance orientation, and 9.7% had a performance-approach orientation. The mastery goal orientation was significantly correlated (r = .10, p < .05) with final course average, but only explained approximately 1% of the variance in course averages. These results indicate that student goal orientation is not a good predictor of course performance and that students with diverse academic goal orientations experienced success in undergraduate agriculture courses.