Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Programs Wendy Warner teaches a course composed of students who are secondary school teachers. With full-time jobs and personal demands, she wanted to streamline her course content with the goal of increasing interactions and professional connections — to foster collaboration in the classroom and also beyond the classroom walls.
Warner turned to DELTA for help through a Course Design Grant during the 2023-24 cycle. Her goal was to enhance student asynchronous interaction by creating or revising activities and assignments. Warner sought to increase connections and the sense of community within the classroom with the hope of fostering the creation of a professional network for agricultural teachers across North Carolina.
AEE 535:Teaching Agriculture in Secondary Schools is part of the Licensure in Education for Agricultural Professionals (LEAP) program offered by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. LEAP is an online teacher certification program in agricultural education. Upon completion, LEAP graduates are certified to teach agriculture in schools.
Project Objectives and Deliverables
Warner shared that the interaction in this course was primarily either student-instructor and/or student/content. She felt there was a lost opportunity for networking due to the lack of student-student interactions and connections.
Warner’s DELTA team was strategically made up of Project Lead/Instructional Designer Christine Cranford, Media Specialist Jeff Williford and Research Specialist Paul Couture. This well-rounded team sought to address Warner’s objectives:
- Increase student-to-student interactions
- Broaden Warner’s contact beyond providing assessment feedback
- Offer options for meaningful connections to busy students who often work full-time
- Streamline Warner’s assignments to reduce grading workload
- Create a course identity by using consistent, cohesive graphics
The DELTA team worked diligently to help Warner create and implement low-stakes activities using VoiceThread, an instructional tool. This proved to be a valuable platform because it transforms traditional media into collaborative spaces with video, voice and text commenting. By using this tool, instructors can take advantage of alternative discussion forums for recorded lectures, student presentations and more.
Opportunities for Warner to increase her presence were implemented throughout the course. Warner participated in VoiceThread activities by sharing her agriculture knowledge and teaching background. Warner also shared when she would be attending national agriculture conferences. She offered to meet class members in person if they were attending too.
Another key element of this grant project was creating a visual identity that would reflect the course content and show a distinct relationship with the field of agriculture. The deliverables included custom banners, and H5P lectures and visuals.
Learn more about DELTA Grants and how to apply.
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