Karly Regan Entomologist – Sustainable Agriculture Advocate – Aspiring Educator

I recently had the opportunity to develop and host a short professional development workshop on using social media in college classes. Our goal was to present social media as a tool to enhance discussions and interaction among students in a course and between instructor and student. We highlighted options to enhancing this connectivity outside of the classroom to keep students engaged between in-class meetings, as well as using it to overcome challenges with keeping large classes (over 50 students) engaged.

My co-host serves as the social media manager for Penn State, so I was able to gain quite a bit of insight from him while we were developing our content and activities. When I first started thinking the workshop early in the semester, I was intimidated and thought I couldn’t possibly have enough professional expertise to guide other students and faculty on teaching methods. By the time my co-host and I were finalizing our lesson plan, however, I was feeling much better prepared. It definitely shows how much I have learned in AEE 530 this semester.

A strength in our workshop design was our use of social media and technology in administering the workshop. We filmed the entire workshop using Periscope, which was one of the platforms we discussed. We also used Poll Everywhere to start off our workshop, which allows participants to answer survey questions using the text message feature on a cell phone.

Without knowing the typical internet or social media usage of our attendees, we opted to keep the information presented fairly broad. We gave some general background on social media and uses for each platform. A weakness in this method was that we only had one hour to administer the workshop and did not take time to show the audience how to use a platform if they were unfamiliar. In future workshops, I would make sure to do this since we received feedback requesting it.

To close the workshop, we administered a Post-It Note survey, where participants were given two colors of Post-It Note and used one color to highlight what they had learned that they found most exciting or interesting and the other color to highlight what their biggest concerns were regarding social media usage in the classroom.

We received a wide variety of answers! Some of the most prominent concerns involved the privacy of internet material used in course discussions and the potential for social media to present distractions rather than benefits. A way to overcome the distraction potential would be to focus on using social media between class meetings rather than during in-class time. We did not have clear answers for our audience regarding the best policy for privacy.

Areas that our participants found most exciting were the potential to generate discussion from introverted students and the ability to keep class variable and new.

Through putting together this workshop, I reinforced some ideas I had and learned many new things. It was very rewarding to see discussion generated among attendees. I look forward to continuing to learn about social media and generating new ideas for using it in academic settings.

After drafting a lesson plan as an assignment for AEE 530, we then chose a ten minute segment of that fifty minute lesson and presented the ten minute section to our classmates. You can view the lesson I gave here and my reflections on the experience here.

Integrated Pest Management (ENT/AGECO 457)
Lesson 8 of 18: 10 minute Micro-teaching Segment

Lesson Title:  How can pest dynamics be modeled and how are thresholds calculated?

Lesson Time: 10 minutes

Hook: Students will learn a quantitative definition of a pest and how to decide when treatment actions are needed to suppress a pest.

Context: In order to manage pests, workers need understanding of how that pest’s abundance is changing over time, the many factors influencing their population growth, how many pests there must be for a problem to be present, and how to make decisions for management.

Lesson Objectives:

1. After lesson is complete, students should be able to determine whether an insect is below a level considered “pest”, an occasional pest, or a frequent pest (to instructor’s satisfaction )
2. After learning the definitions of economic injury level and action threshold, students should be able to use these to decide whether or not treatment is needed to avoid economic loss

Summary of Lesson/Timeline:

Using thresholds to assess pest populations

Lecture: Regan (~10 minutes)

• How to graph population dynamics
• Non-pest; Occasional pest; Frequent Pest
• Economic Injury Level
• Action Threshold
• How to use to make management decision

Stop for activity (5 minutes or less)

Given a pest abundance graph and using today’s lesson on EIL and AT, decide whether pest is abundant enough to treat in each year. Based on number of years that pest exceeds AT, determine whether pest is occasional or frequent.

This is a lesson plan for a workshop that Bill Zimmerman and I designed. You can view the video of our workshop here and the reflections I had on planning and administering a workshop here.

Professional Development Workshop: Spinning the Classroom Web

How can social media and other related tactics help maximize the interaction between the instructor and student, particularly when the class consists of 50 or more students?

After the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Compare and contrast the relevance of four commonly available social media methods/platforms: Blogging, Twitter, Facebook and Periscope; for use inside the classroom
2. Adapt methods to enhance instruction with social media.

WARM-UP/OPENING SURVEY

1. Using PollEverywhere, we will ask participants for their definition of social media as they enter the workshop and find seats; this beings engaging our audience immediately; answers will be projected on screen
2. Introduce ourselves and the workshop.
   Bill: “To demonstrate the use of one social media platform we plan to introduce, we will be filming our workshop using Periscope. You will be able to access this video after if you’d like to see anything again.”
3. Ask participants to participate in think-pair-share regarding their current social media usage or past experiences
   “Good afternoon, we’re going to start with an activity to gauge your current comfort level or level of experience with social media. Please arrange yourselves in a line from 1=high to 5=low. If you consider yourself fairly savvy in social media usage and/or have had positive experiences, head toward Bill (=1). If you consider yourself fairly hesitant to try social media in a classroom or have tried it and not had success, head toward Karly. If you’re somewhere in between, choose a middle location that you feel represents your experiences.”

…wait for line to form

“Okay, great. Now, we’re going to fold you in half and you will meet in pairs or small groups to discuss the experiences you’ve had (guide slide shown on PPT).”
(~15 min; 5 to introduce ourselves/activity and form pairs; 5 to pair-discuss, and 5 to group-share )

INTRO
A brief overview of:

• Social Media, in general
• Blogging
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Periscope

(10 minutes) 

APPLICATION
How can the following mediums be used to create more student engagement inside and outside of the classroom? 

• Blogging
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Periscope

(10 minutes) 

EXERCISE #2 (Flex-activity? Shorten if needed?):

• Will use Tweetdeck to demonstrate the use of Twitter hashtags by showing our #aee530 that has been used throughout our course, as well as during the workshop to generate discussion about social media usage and demonstrate how it has been applied in a classroom; will also show #soc119 as a large-class example that has been successfull
  (~15 min)

QUESTIONS/FEEDBACK

POST-IT EVALUATION: Students give anonymous feedback on sticky notes, offering assets and opportunities on the part of the instructors’ presentation

“You will find post-it notes of two colors on the desks near you. Using (color #1), share with us the social-media related idea you are most excited about implementing in your classroom or learning more about. Using (color #2), share with us the biggest concern you have about using social media in your classroom. Stick them in groups by color on the wall and feel free to glance at the wall on your way out to see what others may have shared.”
(10 minutes)

Here is an example lesson plan that I wrote for a course covering Integrated Pest Management. You can view my reflections on writing a lesson plan here.

Integrated Pest Management (ENT/AGECO 457)
Lesson 8 of 18

Lesson Title: How can pest dynamics be forecast and how are thresholds calculated?

Lesson Time: 50 minutes

Hook: The warm-up activity will be used to activate prior knowledge on pest biology, management tools (learned in prior lessons or courses), and economic considerations (not yet taught, but curious to see what they may know or come up with).

Context: In order to manage pests, workers need understanding of how that pest’s abundance is changing over time, the many factors influencing their population growth, how many pests there must be for a problem to be present, and how to make decisions for management.

Lesson Objectives:

1. After lesson is complete, students should be able to draw an example of a non-pest, an occasional pest, and a frequent pest to instructor’s satisfaction (worksheet due next class).
2. After learning the formula and with an example provided, students should be able to correctly calculate the economic injury level for a pest (in-class).
3. After lesson is complete, students will be able to apply these calculations and forecasting tools to a real-world pest example and decide on whether or not to apply a management tool, to instructor’s satisfaction (worksheet due next class).

Warm Up: Students will be called on to provide as many factors (biotic or abiotic) as they can think of that may influence a pest’s population growth and whether or not a farmer should be concerned about it. (~5 minutes)

Summary of Lesson/Timeline:

1. Patterns of Population Growth

Lecture: Regan (~10 minutes)

• Logistic vs. Exponential
• Seasonal Fluctuations
• How to graph pop. dynamics
• Non-pest; Occasional pest; Frequent Pest

2. How Thresholds are Calculated

Lecture: Regan (~10 minutes)

• Economic Injury Level
• Economic Threshold
• Factors influencing the calculations
• How to use calculation to make management decision

Stop for activity (~5 minutes): Provide an example of a pest-crop complex, a potential management option, and numerical examples for each component of the economic injury level formula. Ask them to calculate the EIL on a sheet of paper and turn in (Assessment #1).

3. Forecasting and Scouting

Lecture: Regan (~5 minutes)

• Why scouting and forecasting are useful
• How it can be done (methods/techniques)

Demonstration: Regan (~5 minutes)

• What online forecasting tools are available (will encourage them to follow along on their own computers if they happen to have them)
• How to use them (input)

Lecture/Demo: Regan (~5 minutes)
How to apply results of forecasting simulation to make a management decision

Wrap-up (~5 minutes): Provide chance for them to ask questions; hand out worksheet, review what’s expected on worksheet (Assessment #2)

Assessments:

1. EIL Calculation: will be scored for participation/attendance
2. Worksheet: Drawing of 3 pest dynamic graphs; 1 paragraph answer to an open-ended question providing a pest example and seeking a management decision; will be scored to provide feedback