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3
Improving the Learning Experience
Changes are needed in the undergraduate experience in agriculture.
The changes include new curricula and content, but it will also be vital to
improve how learning and teaching occur. This chapter will describe aspects
of teaching and learning that are in need of reform, with a focus on the dis-
ciplines within food and agriculture. It therefore serves as context and back-
ground for readers who may not be familiar with the research on teaching
and learning. The committee hopes that implementation of these ideas will
help to both enhance the relevance of undergraduate education and retain
students in agriculture. The chapter also provides a number of examples of
research-based teaching strategies and discusses ways to raise the profile and
impact of high-quality teaching within institutions and disciplines. Interested
readers are encouraged to consult some of the many excellent reports on
undergraduate teaching and learning that have been published in the last
several years (e.g., AAAS 2004; Boyer Commission 1998; NRC 1996a, 1997,
1999c, 2003abc; Seymour and Hewitt 2000; Tobias 1992).
As throughout most of higher education, teaching in agriculture is
strongly influenced by the skills and motivation of the faculty. Most teaching
is good, but all teaching can be improved.
Effective teaching in higher education incorporates pedagogical strate-
gies that create hospitable classroom climates supporting diverse learning
processes and cultural understanding. The traditional approach to college-
level instruction—especially in science, technology, engineering, agriculture,
and mathematics disciplines—has historically been lecture-based delivery;
as discussed below, the passive lecture format may not be as effective as
desired in promoting student learning. Tutorials, laboratories, field-based
learning experiences, problem-based learning, and other models can be
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Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
especially effective in reaching students.1 It should be noted, however, that
hands-on activities are not always “minds-on.” Effective educational activi-
ties require planning and structure to support student learning and achieve
learning objectives.
Most higher-education faculty members arrive at their teaching positions
after earning research doctorates. Few receive any formal training in how
to be effective teachers or are exposed to pedagogy, the science of teach-
ing. In fact, when thrust into the classroom, most faculty members teach
the way they were taught during their own student experiences—which, for
most, is almost exclusively lecture-based—despite research demonstrating
that interactive engagement is more effective in enhancing student learning.
It is not that faculty are unwilling to use research-based methods; rather,
few have had the opportunity to expand their repertoire with new teaching
techniques and tools or to learn about the need to provide more student-
centered learning environments.
The committee applauds the work of a number of professional societies
and journals that are committed to agricultural and undergraduate education
(several of which are listed in Box 3-1). In drawing attention to the chal-
lenges and opportunities in agricultural education, the committee hopes
that the community will call upon these organizations, joining as members,
attending their meetings, publishing in their journals, and benefiting from
their many years of scholarship.
Since the 1991 conference on undergraduate education in agriculture
(compiled in NRC 1992), there have been important advances in the sci-
ence of learning. The National Research Council volumes titled How People
Learn (NRC 1999ab, 2005b) provide an excellent summary of what has been
learned from education, cognitive science, psychology, and related fields
and how to apply it to classroom practice (see Box 3-2).
The National Research Council’s 2003 report on undergraduate teaching
in the STEM disciplines (NRC 2003b)—science, technology, engineering,
and mathematics—provides an excellent overview of the concepts that influ-
ence learning and synthesizes them into seven principles that may be useful
for universities in thinking about reforming classes and curricula:
• Learning for understanding is facilitated when new knowledge and
existing knowledge are structured around the major concepts and principles
of the discipline.
1For a recent discussion of student laboratory experiences with application to both under-
graduate and high-school laboratories, see NRC (2005a).
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Improing the Learning Experience
BOX 3-1
Selected Resources for
Undergraduate Education in Agriculture
Professional societies and associations:
• American Association for Agricultural Education:
• Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education:
Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
BOX 3-2
How People Learn
The National Research Council reports How People Learn (NRC 1999ab,
2005b) reveal several principles that can help to guide instruction:
• New knowledge is built on a foundation of existing knowledge and experi-
ence. Everyday conceptions are resilient and must be actively challenged and
engaged to support conceptual change.
• Learning for understanding requires a deep foundation of knowledge, un-
derstanding facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and organiz-
ing knowledge for effective retrieval and use.
• Metacognitive strategies help students to learn and take control of their own
learning. These strategies—such as predicting outcomes, explaining to oneself,
and noting failures of comprehension—can be taught effectively in the context of
subject matter.
Those principles suggest that it is important for faculty to know the common
conceptions and misconceptions that students bring to a topic, to directly engage
students in confronting those conceptions, to use formative assessment to monitor
student thinking, and to adapt teaching based upon the assessment. They also
show the importance of determining the core concepts that organize a discipline,
of structuring topics to support conceptual understanding, and of paying explicit
attention to reflective assessment.
Summit presentation: M. Suzanne Donovan, Program Director, Strategic Educa-
tion Research Partnership Institute; Study Director, How People Learn, National
Research Council
• Learners’ motivation to learn and their sense of self affect what is
learned, how much is learned, and how much effort will be put into the
learning process.
• The practices and activities in which people engage while learning
shape what is learned.
• Learning is enhanced by socially supported interactions.
Once curricula are designed and implemented, the path to educa-
tion reform is far from complete. One especially important component
is assessment, which enables an instructor or an institution to determine
whether a particular activity, course, or major has been effective in meet-
ing its learning goals. How else is it possible to determine whether students
have learned what is being taught? NRC (2003b) provides an overview of
Improing the Learning Experience
research on effective assessment of student learning that may be helpful
to institutions and faculty members. The document provides a wealth of
information beyond the several points mentioned here, but some elements
bear highlighting:
• Multiple assessment measures provide a more robust picture of what
a person has learned.
• Educational assessment must be aligned with curriculum and instruc-
tion if it is to support learning.
• Assessment practices should extend beyond emphasis on skills and
discrete bits of knowledge to encompass more complex aspects of student
achievement.
• Assessment should provide timely and informative feedback to stu-
dents on their learning to inform the practice of a skill and influence effective
and efficient acquisition.
• Assessment must be designed from the beginning of the instruc-
tional process to ensure that the desired type of information is available for
assessment.
• For assessment to be effective, students must understand and share
the goals for learning that are assessed.
The scholarship of teaching and learning has emerged as an important
area of focus in higher education and has itself become a subject of research,
following the impetus provided by Boyer (1990). That has led to academic
study of and research on the most effective methods of teaching and even
to the creation of subdisciplines on discipline-based education research in
several fields. But the research base can help in the improvement of teach-
ing and learning only if mechanisms that facilitate faculty implementation
of the results of the research are put into place.
Effective teaching and learning have become even more important
as the student body has become more diverse, but effective teaching has
benefits for all students. Students have different learning styles and different
ways of assimilating information, and using a “one size fits all” approach in
any classroom is not likely to meet with success. Moreover, the increased
diversity of undergraduate classrooms helps to increase the variety of view-
points and experiences in a way that benefits all. University faculty facilitate
learning for greater numbers of students if they also provide a diversity of
experiences in their classrooms. As elementary and secondary education
experiences become increasingly collaborative, students are primed for this
type of interaction when they reach college.
0 Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
SkILLS DEvELOPMENT
As is discussed throughout this report, graduates need a growing set of
skills and competences to succeed in today’s professional world. While con-
tent knowledge and technical skills will remain important, 21st-century stu-
dents also need transferrable skills that will be useful in any career. Although
agriculture graduates are not alone in needing these skills, the qualities
that make agriculture colleges unique (see Chapter 1) make it especially
appropriate that agriculture leads the way. These skills should be integrated
throughout a curriculum and other student experiences rather than taught
in separate courses. In fact, many of the strategies for teaching and learning
discussed throughout this chapter can provide opportunities for develop-
ing these skills. Moreover, necessary experiences should be continual and
extended over courses at all levels to allow additional achievement and
growth throughout an undergraduate career. Departments and colleges are
encouraged to conduct explicit planning to define how the skills will be
incorporated into their academic offerings and how student achievement in
these areas will be assessed.
Among the competences that students should develop are teamwork and
working in diverse communities, working across disciplines, communica-
tion, critical thinking and analysis, ethical decision-making, and leadership
and management. Those qualities are discussed briefly below.
Teamwork and Working in Diverse Communities
It is increasingly recognized that the challenges of the future will require
the participation of many people working together in common pursuits. Yet
college students rarely have the opportunity to engage in team-based activities
as part of their academic work. Although many institutions offer collaborative
activities (such as lab partners), they are generally intended more to extend
resources than to afford educational experience. The committee believes that
students should be provided with opportunities to work together both in and
outside the classroom, to interact with and depend on people with different
backgrounds, and to work on projects that will lead to better results than any
student could have obtained alone. It will be especially important for students
to gain experience in working with those who bring different backgrounds,
skills, and perspectives. The workplaces of the future will be far more diverse
than those of the past; students should be encouraged to gain multicultural
awareness and to be comfortable in working with people of varied ages,
ethnicities, and nationalities and with varied work styles.
Improing the Learning Experience
Working across Disciplines
Closely related to working with others is the ability to work and speak
across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Employers need their personnel
not only to interact within disciplines but to bring expertise from different
fields together to solve problems of common interest. As detailed in reports
about interdisciplinary research and training (e.g., COSEPUP 2004), indi-
viduals in different disciplines often have trouble even speaking the same
language. Agriculture colleges can and should help to prepare their students
to speak not only to experts in their own field but more broadly with those
in other fields and with the general public.
Communication
College graduates need excellent written and oral communication skills
to work together, to speak to diverse audiences, and to communicate their
knowledge and expertise more widely. Universities should provide all stu-
dents with numerous opportunities to write and speak about a variety of
topics to audiences that extend beyond their classmates. Students should be
able to speak to those from other fields, from other countries, and from other
sectors. Students should receive guidance and instruction by appropriate
experts so that their communication skills improve. Peer review is especially
encouraged: students should develop the skills and comfort not only to read
and write their own work but to observe and critique that of others.
Critical Thinking and Analysis
Employers need workers who can make good decisions even when
relying on data that are incomplete or even contradictory. Few academic
institutions provide explicit training in critical thinking and analysis, and
few classroom experiences challenge students in this regard. Moreover,
mathematical analysis is often not incorporated into classes beyond a very
basic level, and students have few opportunities to engage in quantitative
reasoning. For example, students are rarely presented with real data or
asked to suggest a strategy when the data do not point to a single “correct”
answer. Textbook examples often downplay confounding data and simplify
scenarios. Even laboratory and field experiences may involve some means of
data cleaning so that students will be able to draw the “correct” inferences.
The natural environment can make pedagogical activities more difficult,
but it is vital that students have the opportunity to engage with real-world
Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
systems and to be forced to evaluate disparate data; they should be asked
to make decisions on the basis of these data and to explain and defend
their choices.
Ethical Decision-Making
Closely related to critical thinking and analysis is the need for students
to make ethical decisions. That includes weighing sometimes contradictory
aspects of disparate data and balancing competing interests. Professionals in
all fields are asked to make tradeoffs all the time, and students need oppor-
tunities to hone their decision-making skills when they have appropriate
guidance and the decisions are less critical. That type of thinking can easily
be incorporated into classroom activities and assignments. For example,
students could be asked to assess the risks and benefits associated with
various practices to balance concerns coming from scientific, economic,
environmental, and other arenas.
Leadership, Management, and Business
Skills that complement working in teams are motivating others and
managing complex tasks, teams, and budgets. Students are almost never
provided with formal opportunities to develop leadership and management
skills. Many students assume leadership roles in extracurricular activities,
but they are rarely given guidance on how to be an effective leader or
manager or how to develop and work with budgets. Those skills are essen-
tial for surviving and thriving in the professional world, and the committee
encourages institutions to build opportunities for students to hone them as
part of their formal and informal undergraduate preparation. Closely coupled
are facilitation and conflict resolution skills, which will enable teams and
groups to work together effectively and to respond to challenges as they
arise. Institutions should also look for opportunities to instill basic business
and financial skills in their students.
CASE STUDIES AND PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING
Food and agriculture provide numerous real-world examples that can
be brought into the classroom and used to enhance student learning, provid-
ing opportunities for students to practice the variety of transferrable skills
described above. Case studies and problem-based learning provide ideal
opportunities for students to work together in diverse teams, to consolidate
Improing the Learning Experience
information from a variety of disciplines, to communicate in both oral and
written forms, to analyze data and evaluate evidence, and demonstrate
leadership skills.
Problems taken from, or at least based on, actual experiences provide
context and relevance to students (Capon and Kuhn 2004; Gijbels et al.
2005). Faculty can use examples from their own research, industry con-
tacts and community organizations can propose challenges for courses,
and extension activities can suggest issues of concern in a given state (see
Chapter 5 for a discussion of the role of outreach, extension, and industry
connection in fostering undergraduate education).
Those types of cases and problems also provide opportunities for stu-
dents to learn by doing. They may even be able to contribute to solutions to
the real-world problems that they are given. For example, one of the posters
presented at the summit described a capstone experience at California
Polytechnic State University that has students working on real problems of
commercial interest (Box 3-3). Case studies and problem-based learning can
help students to understand why academic knowledge matters.
BOX 3-3
Learning by Doing at California Polytechnic State University
Many agriculture colleges stress a “learn by doing” pedagogy designed to
better prepare students and allow them to demonstrate competency. California
Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo has had experiential learning as
a trademark for over 100 years, with ample opportunities for students to incorpo-
rate internships, laboratory classes, and capstone senior thesis projects into their
curriculum. An “Enterprise Project” option gives students access to learning in the
context of commercial projects in livestock, fruit, vegetable, and honey production.
After they have completed coursework on the topic, students are given responsibil-
ity in one of the commercial enterprise project areas under the supervision of a
faculty member. The goal of the project is to be profitable and for students to gain
credit, practical experience, and potentially a share of the profit. Additional benefits
are a stronger work ethic, sense of accomplishment, experience in teamwork,
analysis, synthesis, and assessment.
Poster presented at Summit: Jonathon L. Beckett, Lynn E. Moody, Mary A. Whiteford,
and Mary E. Pedersen. “Learn by Doing Pedagogy in Agriculture through Enter-
prise Projects.”
Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
SERvICE LEARNING AND COMMUNITy ENGAGEMENT
Agriculture lends itself to what has been termed “service learning,”
in which students learn and receive academic credit for participation in
activities that meet community needs (Astin et al. 2000; Battistoni 2001;
Gelmon et al. 2001).2 One could see service learning as the intersection
of community service and academic study. By drawing on scholarship in
the natural and social sciences, civic engagement helps to make content
knowledge come alive and allows students to contribute to the needs of
their community. Service learning also helps to connect the university
with the community. Testifying to the importance of recent developments
in academic–community interactions, the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching has established an elective classification in
community engagement:
Community Engagement describes the collaboration between institutions
of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state,
national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and
resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity.3
Particular elements of the Carnegie classification include the engage-
ment of faculty, students, and community in mutually beneficial and respect-
ful collaboration that addresses community needs, deepens student learning,
enriches scholarship, and enhances community well-being. Such activities
can focus on outreach—applying institutional resources for community
use—or partnership—in which collaborative interactions are common.
These are some of the same elements that the committee highlights as inte-
gral to successful partnerships in Chapter 5.
Community engagement and service learning are natural outgrowths
of many of the best practices discussed throughout this report. Because
agriculture encompasses many areas of study and application with obvious
community connections, the committee hopes that agriculture colleges will
take advantage of opportunities for students to engage with their communi-
ties and receive academic credit for service learning. Several institutions
have taken substantial steps to incorporate service learning throughout their
campuses (see Box 3-4 for one example).
2Campus Compact serves as a clearinghouse for engaging students in service learning. See
for more information.
3See for more
information.
Improing the Learning Experience
BOX 3-4
Center for Excellence in Curricular Engagement at
North Carolina State University
North Carolina State University (NCSU) established a center devoted to service
learning and curricular engagement in 2007, integrating the institution’s land-grant
mission with a commitment to educational innovation and leadership development.
The NCSU Center for Excellence in Curricular Engagement hopes to expand
community-engaged teaching, learning, and scholarship at the university; col-
laborate with other institutions to advance curricular engagement throughout North
Carolina; and establish NCSU as a leader in curricular engagement. The center
offers consultation and development opportunities for faculty and workshops for
all members of the university community, promotes the scholarship of teaching
and learning on campus and beyond, and partners with campus- and community-
based organizations to enhance and create opportunities for community-engaged
learning.
Additional information about the center is available at
Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
to achieve those aims. For example, the National Science Foundation (NSF)
sponsors many undergraduate research experiences by providing supplements
to NSF-funded research awards made to individual investigators (the agency
also provides funding for dedicated programs that offer research experiences
for undergraduates). Agencies can encourage the development of educational
activities that leverage the support already provided to researchers. To that
end, one of the criteria used by NSF in making awards is the “broader-impacts
criterion,” which includes contributions to teaching and learning, broadening
the participation of underrepresented groups, enhancing the infrastructure
for research and education, disseminating results broadly, and providing
societal benefits.10 Those approaches may serve as models for other agencies
and private sponsors to think about ways to encourage the development of
best practices in teaching and learning with relatively modest investments.
When institutional grants and other funds are available, the committee hopes
that deans, department chairs, and other administrators take advantage of
the opportunity to support and encourage such goals as high-quality teach-
ing, active and service learning, extension and outreach, and international
experiences.
Although new and external funding will certainly help institutions in
effecting change, the committee strongly argues that institutions need to take
the necessary steps even if additional funding is not available. Institutional
priorities will need to emphasize undergraduate education, and universities
may need to make tough decisions about redirecting support from other
programs.
ADOPTION OF EFFECTIvE TEACHING METHODS
Despite decades of research demonstrating the effectiveness of teaching
methods, including active student engagement, adoption by individual fac-
ulty has been slow. That suggests that one of the most important challenge
in reforming teaching and learning is not basic knowledge of what works
but putting the information in the hands of faculty, providing the necessary
infrastructure, and providing the appropriate incentives for faculty to imple-
ment the methods.
Most faculty are not aware of the research on teaching and learning,
because it is not a formal part of most graduate training. They enter profes-
10See for examples of activities that are
responsive to NSF’s broader-impacts criterion.
Improing the Learning Experience
sorships without much pedagogical knowledge and often revert to teach-
ing how they have been taught, which often means that undergraduate
classes—and especially those at the introductory level—tend to be lecture-
based passive environments. As will be discussed below, faculty develop-
ment can provide a mechanism for enhancing knowledge of research in
teaching and learning.
Although it is important, simply telling faculty about education research
is unlikely to be sufficient to effect change. Lack of information is only one
of the barriers to the implementation of research-based teaching methods.
For example, Henderson and Dancy (2007) found a number of situational
barriers that limit education reform, including student attitudes and prepara-
tion, expectations of content coverage, limited instructor time, departmental
norms, student resistance, class size, classroom layout, and structure of
instructional time. Those barriers present an important challenge that will
need to be addressed. Even bringing the challenges into the open can have
a powerful effect in encouraging faculty to overcome them. As one mecha-
nism, centers for teaching and learning could offer faculty development
opportunities and discussions in which faculty can work together. Provid-
ing opportunities for science faculty to interact and work more closely with
education researchers also appears to help in implementation (Henderson
and Dancy 2008).
ROLE OF GRADUATE EDUCATION
This report is focused on undergraduate education, but graduate students
play an important role as well. Graduate students serve as teaching assistants
and often have more contact with undergraduates than do members of the
faculty. They serve as mentors in research and teaching laboratories. They
have viewpoints and experiences that can be helpful in curriculum develop-
ment and are often less confined to a single discipline or field of study than
are faculty. Perhaps most important, graduate students—and postdoctoral
researchers—are the faculty of the future. Therefore, engaging them in con-
versation about the reform of undergraduate education while they are still
students and trainees will pay off for years to come. And it will make those
graduate students and postdocs more valuable on the job market if they can
demonstrate depth in their thinking about teaching and learning (see Box 3-7
for an example of a program designed to help graduate students to be effec-
tive teachers).
Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
BOX 3-7
Enhancing Graduate Training in Teaching and Learning:
Delta Program at the University of Wisconsin
The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) at
the University of Wisconsin–Madison has a goal of developing a national faculty in
the natural and social sciences, engineering, and mathematics with the knowledge
and experience to forge successful professional careers that include implementing
and advancing effective teaching and learning practices.
Building on a prototype at UW–Madison, CIRTL’s Delta Program now connects
six research universities in a curriculum of graduate courses, intergenerational
small-group programs, and internships embedded within an interdisciplinary
learning community. Every facet of Delta is designed around models familiar to
researchers in these disciplines. For example, the courses are project-based,
and require students to define a learning problem; understand their student audi-
ence; explore the literature for prior knowledge; hypothesize, design, and imple-
ment a solution; and acquire and analyze data to measure learning outcomes.
Delta internships are research assistantships in teaching, in which a graduate
student or postdoctoral researcher partners with a faculty member to address
a learning problem. Delta activities are also designed to provide each gradu-
ate and postdoctoral participant with a portfolio, letters of recommendation, and
presentations/publications in teaching and learning analogous to those in their
disciplinary research curriculum vitae. Since 2003, more than 1,600 UW–Madison
graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, staff, and faculty have participated
in the Delta learning community.
The Delta Program has enabled graduate students and others early in their
careers to develop the skills and confidence they need to become creative, well-
prepared professionals who will enter the national workforce with the ability to
teach effectively and improve science education broadly.
Additional information about CIRTL is available at ; informa-
tion about the Delta Program is available at .
CENTERS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING
A number of institutions have established centers dedicated to improving
undergraduate instruction. Whether they are called centers for teaching excel-
lence, centers for teaching and learning, or something else, they are typically
staffed by education professionals who work with faculty, graduate teaching
assistants, and others to improve undergraduate education (Singer 2002).
Implementing several of the ideas discussed in this report might be best
carried out by such centers. They already provide an existing infrastructure
in a local setting, have resources and expertise to conduct workshops and
Improing the Learning Experience
other activities, and tend to have a campuswide reach. In addition, they
can serve as a valuable resource to an institution by providing individual
consultation and programming to those seeking to improve teaching on
their campus.
FACULTy DEvELOPMENT
Implementing the changes that would promote effective teaching and
learning in undergraduate agricultural education and support the success
of a diverse student population will require adequate resources. Although
support for academic research is often available to faculty from external
and internal sources, few resources are available for teaching. Educational
innovation may be relatively inexpensive, but it is not without some costs:
faculty need resources to enhance their teaching, to develop new courses,
or to learn new teaching techniques. Teaching assistants (TAs) can often
be critical in enabling faculty to implement new teaching techniques, and
their support can often be provided through instructional budgets. TAs not
only help to take on time-consuming responsibilities, but involving TAs in
educational innovation offers an excellent opportunity to provide graduate
students and others with professional development experiences. Resources
are also needed to allow faculty to keep up with the scholarship and practice
of undergraduate education: support for books, journal subscriptions, society
memberships, and participation in relevant meetings and conferences. Per-
haps the scarcest resource for many faculty is time itself, and release time
may be an appropriate investment in curriculum reform.
Faculty development, in general, is essential for helping to prepare
faculty to take advantage of the research on teaching and learning. Faculty
development will have to be multifaceted to include both formal train-
ing and support for participation in ongoing networks; it should occur at
several levels and be conducted by a variety of communities. Universities
have an obvious responsibility to ensure that their faculty are kept current
with research on teaching and learning, new pedagogical techniques, and
developments in instructional technology. Professional societies have an
important role to play in supporting high-quality education in their disci-
plines and can bring expertise in teaching and learning to individual fields
of study. Funding agencies, accrediting bodies, and other national organi-
zations can help to promote and support activities to convene faculty to
discuss these issues and promote the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Relatively inexpensive investments in such activities will pay dividends for
years to come.
Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
There are many models of faculty development, from individual work-
shops to year-long sabbaticals focused on teaching and learning. It is likely
that in-depth—but brief—experiences provide maximal benefit for a small
investment of time or resources. For example, the National Academies has
developed a week-long faculty-development institute for undergraduate
faculty in the biological sciences with a particular focus on research uni-
versities (see Box 3-8). Another type of model is a network of faculty dedi-
cated to a common purpose, such as Project Kaleidoscope’s Faculty for the
21st Century network (see Box 3-9).
BOX 3-8
National Academies Summer Institute on
Undergraduate Education in Biology
The authors of the 2003 National Research Council report Bio2010: Transforming
Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists recognized the central role
of faculty development in effecting changes in undergraduate education, and they
devoted one of their eight recommendations to campus-level and national faculty
development (NRC 2003a).
As a direct result of that recommendation, the National Academies estab-
lished the National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education
with support from HHMI, the Research Corporation for Science Advancement,
the Presidents’ Committee of the National Research Council, and the University
of Wisconsin–Madison (Wood and Gentile 2003; Wood and Handelsman 2004;
Pfund et al. 2009). The summer institute seeks to transform undergraduate biology
education at research universities nationwide by improving classroom teaching
and attracting diverse students to science. Teams of two or three faculty members,
most of whom teach introductory courses, learn about and implement the themes
of “scientific teaching” (Handelsman et al. 2004)—active learning, assessment,
and diversity—during a week-long workshop dedicated to teaching and learning.
Participants work together to develop materials and lessons that they agree to
implement in their courses in the following year.
The impact of the summer institute is far greater than the individual teaching
materials; rather, it seeks to transform how individual faculty members view their
teaching and, by extension, influence other members of their departments and
their disciplines to make similar transformations (Pfund et al. 2009). Participants
are named National Academies Education Fellows in the Life Sciences and are
encouraged to become ambassadors for education reform on their campuses and
throughout their professional communities. The aim is, therefore, to leverage a pro-
gram that directly reaches 40 faculty per year—who themselves teach over 15,000
students per year—into one that reaches hundreds of thousands of students.
Additional information about the Summer Institute is available at
Improing the Learning Experience
BOX 3-9
Project Kaleidoscope Faculty for the 21st Century
Since 1994, Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) has been managing a national net-
work of emerging leaders in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM), known as Faculty for the 21st Century (F21). The network
encourages faculty to become agents of change and visible leaders on their cam-
puses and in their disciplines.
The goal of the PKAL F21 network is to foster every F21 member’s capacity
for leadership by providing opportunities to explore new ways of thinking about
students, about science and technology, and about society. PKAL intends to build
a supportive alliance among and between the F21 members and the affiliated net-
work of current leaders in STEM education. The F21 network now includes more
than 1,200 faculty at over 500 colleges and universities around the country.
F21 members are nominated by senior administrators on their campuses, who
must make a commitment to enhance the leadership capacities of their nomi-
nees. The collaboration between PKAL and participating campuses is an essential
ingredient of the F21 network in recognition that groups working together can
accomplish more than those working in isolation.
Additional information about the PKAL F21 network is available at
0 Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
FACULTy REWARDS
One of the greatest obstacles to the reform of teaching and learning cited
at the Leadership Summit was the institutional reward structure, especially
the criteria for promotion and tenure. A thorough review of institutional
tenure-review policies is far beyond the scope of this report, but the com-
mittee believes that the importance of the issue merits a brief discussion
here.12
There was a strong feeling among participants in the summit that tenure
criteria are strongly tilted toward faculty members’ research productivity
and that too little attention is paid to teaching and service. Faculty, under-
standably, are driven by what their employers value: in the current reward
structure, this means research activities, especially being published and
securing external grant support. Even though teaching and learning are at
the heart of academic institutions, they rarely play a substantial role in the
evaluation of faculty. In part, that is because of the perceived difficulty in
measuring teaching quality objectively, but there are strategies for evaluating
faculty teaching and student learning (NRC 2003b). Many institutions do
offer some sort of teaching award, but some complain that such awards can
be little more than popularity contests that reward entertaining or dynamic
instructors. The competitions are often based solely on student evaluations
and rarely consider measures of student learning. Moreover, an institution
may give only a handful of the awards each year, leaving many excellent
instructors without recognition or acknowledgment.
Implementing high-quality educational practices and enhancing institu-
tional rewards for teaching and learning will require renewed emphasis at
all levels, including the top of an institution. When the driving force for the
process flows from the president and provost, the attention of internal and
external stakeholders can be focused on support and encouragement for
teaching. Some of the changes that will be required are a refocusing of faculty
hiring and evaluation to include consideration of learning outcomes, valuing
the scholarship of teaching and learning in the promotion and tenure process,
and adopting other strategies for honoring and supporting teaching.
A number of ideas for rewarding undergraduate teaching and supporting
student learning were offered at the Leadership Summit. Some institutions
have created teaching tracks in which instructors are judged primarily on
the basis of the quality of their teaching and that are separate from the
12For a more thorough discussion of institutional rewards for teaching, see, for example,
NRC (2003b).
Improing the Learning Experience
research-track faculty that have been the standard. The positions sometimes
have distinct titles, such as “professor of the practice of . . . .” In most of the
cases discussed, however, the teaching track does not offer the possibility of
tenure, and there are often limitations on involvement in faculty governance;
this raised concerns about a two-tier system in which teaching faculty are
relegated to a lower rank. Some institutions have established tenure-track
faculty positions in discipline-based education, affording faculty the same
opportunities and responsibilities as traditional research-focused faculty
members. Those holding such positions are expected to conduct original
research, publish in peer-reviewed publications, secure extramural funding,
and become leaders in their fields; the only difference is that their research
is focused on education.
One institution participating in the summit had come to the conclu-
sion that teaching should not be considered the indiidual responsibility of
faculty members but the collectie responsibility of an entire department.
That change in mindset helped to encourage an open discussion of teaching
and learning at that institution instead of something that happened behind
closed doors. The institution even decided to offer teaching awards to entire
departments; in addition to public recognition, the award comes with a prize
of unrestricted funds that the department can spend as it sees fit. Because
such unrestricted funds are so uncommon at most institutions, this can be a
powerful motivator for even a recalcitrant department to focus on teaching
quality and student learning.
Perhaps most interesting were institutions that had incorporated under-
graduate teaching into their tenure criteria (see overview in Bush et al. 2006).
One speaker described an extensive plan at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison (UW–Madison) that pays attention to teaching in tenure consider-
ation. As explained in Box 3-10, UW–Madison has developed a structure
in which teaching can be a primary area of accomplishment for tenure
consideration; it can also serve as a secondary area that is taken seriously
for faculty who have research as their primary area of focus. Policies like
those at UW–Madison can serve as models for other institutions in drafting
similar criteria that give appropriate consideration to teaching. What may
be more of a challenge, however, is getting universities to both adopt and
enforce such policies.
Some concern has been raised about the danger of creating a “caste
system” in which some faculty concentrate on teaching and others are com-
mitted mostly to research. Institutions that choose to pursue such a path will
need to ensure that compensation, advancement, job security, and respect
are provided equally to teachers and researchers.
Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
BOX 3-10
Valuing Teaching for Tenure and Promotion at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison has taken steps to value undergraduate
teaching in the criteria for granting tenure. As described by Caitilyn Allen, pro-
fessor of plant pathology, who served as chair of the university-level tenure com-
mittee in 2005–2006, UW–Madison made a commitment to incorporate a rigorous
and fair evaluation of teaching for consideration of tenure. The university has
established a culture that has the support of the administration; this means that
department decisions based on teaching cannot be outweighed by concerns
about external grant support.
Tenure dossiers at UW–Madison must describe achievements in research,
teaching, outreach (extension), and service; a candidate must show “excellence”
in one and “significant accomplishment” in a second; any candidate with a teach-
ing appointment is judged partly on the basis of teaching. Those seeking tenure
primarily on the basis of teaching must demonstrate a national or international
reputation that is demonstrated by scholarly work related to teaching. More com-
monly, teaching is considered an important accomplishment to support a primary
focus on research or extension.
Among the metrics used to evaluate teaching are the following:
• Numbers of courses and students taught, taking into consideration how
many were new preparations and student mentoring outside class.
• Student evaluations, including numerical ratings for each course, but also
qualitative student evaluations for a selection of courses and exit interviews with a
handful of randomly selected students from each course. Even if individual student
responses are not always objective or fair, the collective wisdom of many students
usually provides an accurate picture of an instructor.
• Peer review, in which two faculty members observe two class sessions
each semester and write an evaluation that is discussed with the junior faculty
member. For those seeking tenure primarily on the basis of teaching, an indepen-
dent committee of master teachers from outside the home department is brought
in to assess the candidate’s teaching.
• Evaluation of teaching materials, including a two-page statement of teach-
ing philosophy and practice, new curriculum development (when relevant), and
copies of original teaching materials, such as syllabi, assignments, examinations,
and laboratory or field exercises.
• Measures of the effect of the candidate’s teaching-related work beyond his
or her own classroom, including peer-reviewed articles, textbooks, and other ped-
Improing the Learning Experience
agogical materials; presentations at regional, national, and international meetings;
grants to develop courses or curricula or to conduct pedagogical research; and
documentation that the candidate’s teaching activities have resulted in changed
practices beyond the campus.
• Letters from off-campus experts on teaching in the candidate’s field who
review and assess the faculty member’s teaching dossier in the case of someone
being considered primarily on the basis of teaching.
In many ways, those measures are directly comparable with measures used
for research productivity, so they should not be foreign to most faculty.
Allen noted that the reviews are not pro forma but are taken seriously. There
are examples of candidates with good external funding and substantial publica-
tion records who failed to be promoted because of the absence of high-quality
teaching.
The university coupled the altered procedures with institutional resources to
support faculty as teachers: partnering young faculty with master teachers and
developing mentor committees, providing peer review and comments on teaching,
offering workshops and symposia to generate ideas and build a culture of teach-
ing, granting teaching leaves to assist in course development and revision, and
awarding small grants for computers and software, memberships, subscriptions to
teaching-oriented publications, and attendance at education-focused conferences.
And it has taken steps to continue to value teaching after tenure, for example, by
making it one criterion for annual merit salary adjustments, requiring sabbatical
applications to include a justification for teaching development, nominating in-
structors for teaching awards, and publicizing faculty teaching accomplishments.
For additional information see the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Guidelines
for Recommendations for Promotion or Appointment to Tenure Rank in the Biologi-
cal Sciences Division at
Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World
Support for teaching can also be incorporated into faculty hiring. Actions
such as emphasizing and providing appropriate descriptions of teaching
opportunities in position descriptions, asking for statements of teaching phi-
losophy and experience as part of an application, discussing teaching and
learning during interviews, asking candidates to conduct a sample class during
a campus visit, and involving students in the campus visit can send a signal
that teaching is valued and provide information that hiring committees can
use in assessing a candidate’s teaching ability. Institutions could also consider
devoting a portion of startup costs to education-related expenses; even a
small amount of money can go a long way in emphasizing the importance of
teaching and providing the impetus for faculty to learn more about effective
teaching strategies or teaching materials. Those steps, if taken early, can help
to reinforce attention to education that can last for an entire career.
Steps to promote teaching in early-career faculty can enhance the syn-
ergy between research and teaching that contributes both to more relevant
teaching and to more innovative research. Such programs as NSF’s Faculty
Early Career Development (CAREER) program13 and the HHMI Professors
program14 help to bridge teaching and research and to support faculty
members who excel in and integrate both.
Institutions can and should also support the development of good
teachers. As discussed above, faculty development is a vital component,
but generally helping to build institutional capacity should be a goal. That
can include discussions of teaching and learning during faculty meetings,
hosting speakers on education as part of department seminar series, offer-
ing certificate programs in undergraduate education for graduate students,
designing new classroom spaces that support active learning, and providing
opportunities for the development of new seminars and laboratories.
Those steps, taken together, can foster a culture of excellence in under-
graduate education in which faculty, staff, administrators, and students work
together to improve teaching and learning. Faculty who receive training
in evidence-based methods and materials can be more effective teachers
and promote enhanced student learning. The ultimate outcome should be
well-prepared students who have the motivation and confidence to pursue
their interests and careers of choice. Using research-based methods and
supporting instruction that fosters these goals will help our universities to
be leaders in undergraduate education.
13See for more information about the NSF CAREER program.
14See for more information about the HHMI
Professors program.
