it’s teaching… on campus and off steve isaacs university of kentucky
Post on 19-Dec-2015
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Distribution of Effort
• Classroom teaching and extension teaching are complementary in every respect except time
Complementarities
• Source of illustrations
• A two-way street
– Extension cases to illustrate principles
– Classroom principles to explain why things happen
Complementarities
• Farm illustrations
• Marginal decision making
– Spent $600 on fencing next milk check was up $800
– Award winning dairy farm in bankruptcy
– Pen of hogs that “eat a hog every two days”
– Add Input as long as value created by the input exceeds it’s cost
Complementarities
• Classroom illustrations
– Add input as long as the value created exceeds the cost of the input
– 10% interest and 8% returns, risk aversion
– Senior seminar projects (machinery costs, corn grazing, dairy heifer budgeting)
– Lab exercises on financial statements
Complementarities
• Classroom principles- teaching/learning
– Deficient in learning “how to teach”
– Teaching methods
• Direct instruction
• Socratic method
• Interactive approaches
Complementarities
• Classroom principles- teaching/learning
– Learning styles
• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinesthetic
Similarities
• Diversity of audience
– Undergraduate backgrounds, majors and abilities
– Farmers education and knowledge level
Thoughts on addressing diversity
• Avoid the least common denominator
• Don’t leave some behind
• Err on the challenging side
• See challenge as a motivator
Tools to address diversity
• Low student/teacher ratio
• 1-on-1 assistance
• Use TA’s, LA’s
• Peer tutoring, e.g. Lab tracking
Another similarity
• Students want to know
– “what’s on the test?”
• Farmers want to know
– “how much do I use to kill it?”
• The challenge
– to move from facts to application
– to teach thinking
How do we teach thinking?
• Critical thinking in classroom equals decision making in Extension
• The easy way is to answer the questions
• It’s harder to teach critical thinking and decision making
How do we teach thinking?
• Active learning
– Ext addresses current problems
– Bring current problems to classroom
• Classroom interactive lectures, exercises, problems, projects
• Extension workshops instead of 20 minute show and tell
Differences (other than time)
• Extension is not a captive audience– when you going to get to the estate planning?
– Extension audiences are more cynical
– Extension audiences rarely take notes
– Extension education is too cheap
– Is the classroom?
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