Volume 12, Number 1, 2003
When students in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources take charge of the care and feeding of a piglet for a semester or investigate why the roofs of local farm buildings have collapsed under the weight of snow, they're demonstrating problem-based learning.
It's an instructional technique used regularly by Lesa Griffiths and James Scarborough, who were awarded 2003 Excellence-in-Teaching Awards at Honors Day ceremonies in May. The annual University-wide awards, presented to four faculty members, are sponsored by the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation and the University Alumni Association. Recipients are selected primarily based on student evaluations.
Griffiths is a professor of animal nutrition who also directs UD's Center for International Studies, and Scarborough is an associate professor of bioresources engineering.
Those who nominated Griffiths and Scarborough this year say both go the extra mile to make sure that the students who leave their classrooms are prepared to meet
the academic and professional challenges that await them. The professors say they work at continually improving their classroom skills, adding that teaching holds a pivotal role throughout the College.
"At the University of Delaware, teaching is seen as important; it holds equal stature with professional research," Scarborough says. "Here in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, there's an especially strong emphasis on teaching. It makes for a very meaningful environment in which to grow as a teacher."
He and Griffiths say they focus on instruction by attending seminars and other programs at UD's Center for Teaching Effectiveness and by other methods. These include the simple but effective technique of "hanging out with other teachers who have great ideas and want to improve their teaching," Griffiths says.
She says she stays in
e-mail contact with professors all over campus who are "doing interesting things in the classroom" and embraces new teaching ideas wherever she finds them. A key, she says, is to take risks in the classroom and not be afraid to fail. Of course, "classroom" is a bit of a misnomer in Griffiths' case, since very little of her teaching takes place in a formal setting.
Her "Introduction to Animal Science" class is held on UD's Newark Farm, in a poultry house one week, the dairy barn the next. And, her swine production class--meeting in the swine barn, naturally--is a model of problem-based, collaborative learning in action. Teams of students are organized at the beginning of the semester and charged with the responsibility of raising a pig. All management decisions, from nutrition to sick care, lie in the hands of the students.
"I'm a big believer in learning by doing," Griffiths says. "I prepare the students for the challenges they'll face, then I step back and say, 'You're going to do it.'" Students in the class have 24-hour access to her via phone and pager, though Griffiths says the College's on-site farm manager, Scott Hopkins, is more likely to receive the frantic, late-night calls about a sick pig.
"Scott and his staff are really my co-teachers," she says. "I couldn't teach this kind of class without the assistance of the farm management team."
Class notebooks from previous swine production classes are a testament to all that the students have learned--about raising pigs but also about project management, conflict resolution, decision-making and team-building.
"Petunia [the pig]... taught me a lot about myself and what I was capable of," one student wrote. "I had to learn to make decisions on my own, through common sense and from what we learned in class in order to provide the best care. This experience is one that will stay with me forever."
Another student's journal noted: "Worried about our piglets, I have made a few frantic phone calls to Dr. Griffiths late at night. She is always so calm and explains what needs to be done. I also learned [from her] that the more experience you have, the more confident you become."
In Scarborough's classes, students also are exposed to problem-solving challenges drawn from real life. Last winter, one of his upper-level classes discussed rural building-code standards and whether these standards should be raised to the more stringent level of residential codes. The impetus for the discussion was the collapse of several farm buildings in Delaware and surrounding states after heavy, wet snows in January and February. The students debated whether changing weather patterns merited a change in building standards and the pros and cons of implementing such a change.
In addition to such advanced classes, Scarborough teaches introductory courses that focus heavily on principles and concepts. Even in these classes, in which a tremendous amount of information must be imparted, Scarborough says he frequently lets his students know how seemingly esoteric concepts will later prove to be useful.
"Sometimes, I'll stop in the middle of an exercise and ask, 'Why are we doing this?' I'm always reminding them of how these basic concepts are the stepping-stones they need to go out one day and design a new building or farm equipment or HVAC system," he says.
The students whose evaluations helped Scarborough win this year's teaching award say they appreciate his approach. "Dr. Scarborough always is willing to help you," says Ken Ogada, AG 2003, a bioresources engineering major. "He makes the material understandable and makes learning fun."
--Margo McDonough, AS '86, '95M