Media Goals

For our department to teach at the highest level, an adequate learning structure must be provided to all students. The textbooks available do not address the broad and varied previous knowledge of the students in our course. We believe that the solution lies in giving all students a (video) reference for procedural parts of the labs that can be reviewed at each student's own pace, and then having the students work in a peer-to-peer team.  This setting allows the students to teach each other new material, increasing all the students’ abilities. This accelerates the learning curve and will allow the course to move quickly into more advanced areas.

The main goal is to improve the learning success of all students enrolled in HORT301 through the use of a tool which will work as a common point of reference. It will serve as the basis for a teamwork approach to solving scientific problems.  Such an approach allows each student to bring his or her own knowledge and talents to the group. The lab portion of Hort301 that generates the most face-to-face contact between student and faculty and decreasing time spent on low yield reviews of procedures can be replaced with high value interaction with the students.  Putting the "how to" of a lab experiment on video pod Casts will enable the students to get past procedural questions and move on to questions of content, improving the quality of interactions with their professor and instructors.  This maximizes the most of precious lab time and helps address the problem of how to overcome students with little experience in lab experiments and still challenge students who already know basic methodology during the practical lab portion of this science course.