Improving Distance Education Through a Statewide Program Approach (1:00-1:15pm)
Debra Barry
University of Florida

Covid 19 has shed light on the current need to provide quality educational opportunities for all learners, no matter their location. Opportunities to earn a degree require instructors and administrators to reflect on accessibility, access, and reaching diverse audiences. This presentation aims to share perspectives on current challenges and best practices for designing and implementing distance education through a state-wide program approach. Participants will hear about the experiences of presenters from the instructor and administrator perspective. Objectives of the presentation include participant reflection on current practices as well as issues related to distance learning, sharing the lived experiences and journey of faculty and administrators in making a statewide program work for all stakeholders, and tips for those programs who aim design a statewide program with a distance learning component. Presenters have been engaged in a statewide program as a team for over six years and will present philosophical perspectives as well as best practices from their own experiences. This particular statewide location has experienced an increase of over 100% in the overall distance location student enrollment since the team began working together on improving the delivery of the program. In addition, there has been significant growth in collaborative efforts of the faculty and staff in their shared efforts and in the delivery of the coursework. This workshop will fulfill the NACTA mission of providing a forum for discussion for all post-secondary teachers of agriculture about questions and issues, as well as seeking improvement in the professional advancement of distance teaching and learning in agriculture. The world has is ever-changing, and this presentation aims to bring a new perspective on how to continue to remain relevant and accessible to all learners.

The Importance of Experiential Learning in Agriculture Literacy Opportunities (1:15-1:30pm)
Kimberly Cash
Lincoln University

Learning Preferences (LP) are considered stable indicators of how students and adults respond to factors of learning in an environment. The environment is interactive with cognitive thought, critical and creative thinking, emotional, physical, and social learning processes. Research farms remain popular for academic and extension faculty use because of the opportunity to share rich experiential teaching opportunities for all ages. Agriculture's connection to human health and environmental quality, and the societal lack of understanding agriculture literacy, exposes the need for enhanced agricultural education efforts. Lincoln University at Jefferson City, Missouri introduced thirty-five (35) incoming agriculture majors, with varying levels of prior knowledge to agriculture, by using experiential methodology. A blind pre- and post-event survey was performed that contained twenty-one (21) prompts using a 5-point Likert scale, regarding introduced topics and disciplines for the day. A paired t-test with probability correction for multiple t-tests was used to analyze the data set. Exposing incoming freshmen to Agriculture Literacy, by using hands-on learning and visual experiences, increased student understanding of agriculture disciplines in Poultry Science, Animal Welfare, Aquaculture, Plants and Soil Science, Environmental Sciences and Geospatial Information Systems (GIS). Additional questions on the post-event survey asked participants to share their favorite activities of the day. The top three activities were all fully involved hands-on activities of the day. These included sorting and weighing sheep, catching chickens, candling eggs, and preparing and testing soil samples. The least favorite activities included more watching and listening which included less hands-on training.

The UALSA Summer Institute: Advancing Culturally Responsive Practices in  School- Based Agricultural Education Through Teacher Professional Learning (1:30-1:45pm)
Aaron Golson
University of Georgia

Historically, agricultural education has served as an integral part of preparing and transforming individuals to address problems within the field. However, previous studies have shown that the connection between urban populations and agriculture has widen, leading to a lack of understanding of the importance and relevance of agriculture to their everyday lives. The US government has provided numerous resources to educate and support urban agricultural literacy through agricultural and extension education. Yet, these traditional forms are not working to recruit and retain this population due to cultural disconnects. This descriptive study evaluated the effectiveness of a summer institute hosted by a land-grant institution with the goal of helping educators implement culturally responsive practices in urban agricultural education. The framework for this evaluation focused on the reaction and learning levels of Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluation to assess respondents' perceived knowledge about culturally responsive pedagogy and satisfaction with the professional learning experience. The two research objectives guiding the study were to describe respondents': 1) satisfaction with the summer training institute; and 2) knowledge about culturally responsive practices. Survey results of the 11 participants indicated that the respondents were extremely satisfied with their overall experience at the summer training institute and expressed a desire to implement what they had learned. Also, respondents exhibited a basic knowledge of culturally responsive instructional strategies and a desire to learn more strategies. Recommendations include extending the time of the institute from 4 to 5 days and collecting data on Kirkpatrick's last two levels of application and impact once participants return to the classroom. Preliminary findings support further exploration of this institute as a blueprint for professional learning collaborations between colleges of agriculture and school-based teachers related to developing and implementing culturally responsive curriculum that strengthens the urban student pipeline into agriculture.

Modeling Action Research Through Statistics in an Undergraduate  Statistics Course (1:45-2:00pm)
Colby Gregg
The Ohio State University

Undergraduate statistics can be a daunting course for some students. The objective of this teaching practice was to model how teachers can utilize data to make instructional decisions, and to make this process as accessible as possible. This practice was implemented in a course that was created to offer a social-science practitioner view of statistics and how they can be implemented within the 'real world" in the variety of positions that our students move on to serve in. In teaching this class, I wanted to model the process of action research and using statistics and statistical evidence to make instructional decisions as a teacher “ especially for the half of the course who were agriscience education majors. Through this process, students were presented with class-wide, summarized data from formative and summative assessments, and participated in a guided discussion surrounding what the data could tell us about the assessment“ and by extension, my teaching. Through these discussions, students were introduced to the utilization of student data to guide instructional planning. This process, along with students simultaneously being familiar with the assessment we were discussing, lead to rich discussion surrounding what statistics can and can't tell us about the real world. This process was repeated for a total of five assignments over the semester: two semester exams and three pop quizzes. Ultimately, these sessions lead to deeper student discussions about the interpretation and use of statistics, and how these can be used to either inform or mislead the consumers of this research.