Computer, Video, and Rapid-Cycling Plant Projects in an Undergraduate Plant Breeding Course.

Affordable products of technological advances can offer fresh opportunities for designing appealing and effective undergraduate student projects. I designed projects involving videotape production, computer conferencing, microcomputer simulation, and rapid-cycling Brassica breeding for undergraduate plant breeding students in two course offerings in consecutive years. Students in both years perceived differences in effectiveness of the projects as learning experiences. The 1990 class rated the video production project as the most effective, and the computer conferencing project as the least effective. In contrast, the differences in student evaluation of the projects in 1991 were expressed more in the degree of divergence in student ratings of a project rather than in the mean rating itself. Students in 1991 most uniformly rated the computer conferencing and rapidcycling Brassica projects, but split their opinions regarding the effectiveness of the video produclJon and computer simulation projects. Linking two projects, as was done with the computer conferencing and video projects inq991, improved the ratings of the weaker project. In my opinion, using new technologies in projects motivates students by appealing to their curiosity and creativity. Incorporating new technologies in coursework also exposes students to communication a d research tools that may be important in their careers. p l RODUCTS of technological advances can offer fresh opportunities for designing appealing and effective undergraduate projects. Examples of new and affordable products that can be applied to teaching include personal computers with increased processing speed and mass storage, enhanced computer networks, video production equipment, and rapid-cycling Brassica species. I designed a series of projects to supplement or reinforce specific topics introduced in plant breeding lectures and to give students hands-on experience with new communication and research technologies. The disciplinary content of the projects included crossing methods, societal issues involving plant breeding, recurrent selection methods, and heritability estimation. Students acquired this disciplinary knowledge by producing videos, debating in computer conferences, conducting computer simulations, and manipulating rapid-cycling Brassica populations. The computer simulation and rapid-cycling Brassica projects emphasized individualized experiential learning (Lewin, 1951; Kolb, 1984; Bawden, 1985) where the students conducted structured experiments with no predetermined outcome. Others previously developed and used undergraduate student projects involving computer simulation of animal (DeRouen et al., 1989) and plant breeding (St. Department of Crop Science, Ontario Agric. College, Univ. of Guelph, Guelph, ON N 1G 2W 1. Received 15 May 1992. *Corresponding author. Published in J. Nat. Resour. Life Sci. Educ. 22:100-102 (1993). Martin and Skavaril, 1984) and I previously reported heritability estimation in the classroom using rapidcycling Brassica (Michaels, 1990). The computer conferencing and video production projects stressed cooperative group learning and communication skills; the group’s task was to logically explain a process or defend an argument. The computer conferencing project followed the precepts of a structured writing assignment (Parrish et al., 1985) in a writing-to-learn context. The video production project emphasized development of reasoning (Eversole, 1990) rather than improvement oral presentation skills (Cox and Martin, 1989). The objective of this study was to determine whether students perceived differences in the effectiveness of the four projects. MATERIALS AND METHODS Students in two consecutive undergraduate plant breeding course offerings (winter semesters of 1990 and 1991) conducted four projects. The students were in their third or fourth year of a biological or agricultural science degree program. The course format was traditional, with three, 1-h lectures and one, 2-h laboratory each week of a 12-wk semester. Computer Confereneing Projects. TCoSy (Teaching Conference System, Univ. of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2Wl), an on-campus, teaching-oriented computer conferencing system resident on a central campus computer, served as the forum for a set of student debates. Students accessed TCoSy from departmental and library microcomputer terminals, and from personal computers via modem. Due to the high number of potential workstations and 24-h access to TCoSy, the students could work on this project independently and at any time of day or night. The debate topics focused on issues currently at the interface between plant breeding and society. Examples of resolutions that were debated include: ownership of plant breeding subsidiaries by multinational chemical companies should be prohibited; public sector breeding project proposals to develop herbicide-resistant plant varieties should not be funded; cultivar registration in Canada should be abolished; and breeders in public institutions should focus on development of cultivars explicitly suited for sustainable agricultural systems. The students formed groups of four (two affirmative and two negative) based on debate topic choice. Each student submitted a four-screen (approximately two double-spaced typewritten pages) constructive argument presenting his or her side of the debate topic, directed two questions to each member of the opposition, and responded to the four questions posed by the opposition. I set deadlines for submission to the conference of the constructive ar100 J. Nat. Resour. Life Sci. Educ., Vol. 22, no. 2, 1993 guments, questions and responses, and allowed a total of 5 wk to complete the project. Video Production Project. The students formed groups of four and scripted, shot, and edited a VHS-format video approximately 15 rain long. They shot the video using a VHS-format portable camcorder and edited their program using a pair of Panasonic (Panasonic Industrial Co., Secaucus, N J) AG-1950 VHS-format video cassette recorders linked by a Panasonic AG-A95 editing controller. In 1990, the students produced videotapes that described floral morphology and crossing methods for tobacco (Nicotiana tabacurn L.), canola (Brassica napus and B. campestris L.), soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.], strawberry (Fragaria Xananassa Duch.), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), and tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.). In 1991, the students remained in the groups they formed for the computer conferencing debate project. The debaters produced a video presenting both sides of their topic through on-screen monologs, graphics, and interviews with experts and peers. The whole class viewed these videos during subsequent lecture and laboratory periods. I allowed the students 4 wk to complete the project. Computer Simulation Project. The students received copies of Gregor, a genetic computer simulation program developed by Nicholas A. Tinker (Dep. of Plant Science, McGill Univ., Macdonald Campus, PQ H9X 1X0) and simulated population improvement of an outcrossing diploid plant species. The Gregor software required an IBM PC-compatible computer with at least 256K RAM. Each student constructed a 100-member heterozygous and heterogeneous source population of an imaginary species with 10 linkage groups where 50 loci controlled the target quantitative trait. The students then guided their populations through five cycles of mass and $1 recurrent selection and monitored the changes in genotypic and phenotypic mean and variance from cycle to cycle for each selection method. The exercise climaxed when the students extracted inbreds from their best C5 population and created hybrids. I allowed the students 3 wk to complete the project. Rapid-Cycling Brassica Project. The students grew two generations of rapid-cycling Brassica rapa L. plants (Williams and Hill, 1986) and measured morphologic characteristics at flowering. They then regressed offspring values on parent values to determine narrow sense heritability. The structure of this semester-long project was previously reporte d (Michaels, 1990). Student Responses. In both years the students were asked to evaluate three aspects of each project: the potential of the technology underlying the project, the concept and planning of the project, and the overall effectiveness of the project as a learning experience. Each student applied his or her own definition of effectiveness when evaluating the projects. The students recorded their evaluations in an end-of-semester survey using a scale of I (very good) to 5 (very poor). Statistical Analysis. The student evaluation data were first summarized into separate two-way ( r × c) contingency tables (Steel and Torrie, 1960) for each project Table 1. Mean and standard deviation of student evaluation scores for four projects in an undergraduate plant breeding course. Scores for technology, planning, and overall effectiveness were combined.