Teaching, Learning and Communication Section Track Sessions

Various technology resources - clickers, simulation software, and online resources (websites, blogs, audio-visual aids) - are available to teach economic principles and business concepts. The speakers will explore the prescribed practices from economics and business teachers, and offer useful tips that can help teachers newer to using technology. This session extends the AAEA 'Pre-conference Workshop: 2010 Teaching Academy—The Use of Simulations to Stimulate Student Learning and Engagement,' as well as contributes to TLC's recent efforts developing an online repository of materials for classroom teaching purposes.

Each year the Student Section of the AAEA recognizes an Outstanding Chapter and a Creative Club. Awards are presented at the AAEA awards ceremony at the annual meeting. The Student Section also sponsors an Academic Bowl contest at the annual meeting. In recent years several chapters have had repeated success in winning these awards and contests. Club advisors from other chapters would like to know how successful undergraduate clubs and teams are developed, what activities they carry out, and how club advisors are chosen and rewarded. Three presenters will be chosen to address the following topics: 1) How to develop a successful undergraduate club in a large department. 2) How to develop a successful undergraduate club in a small department. 3) How to develop a successful Academic Bowl team.

This session offers the opportunity for AAEA Teaching Award recipients to share teaching tips and have a dialogue with AAEA members. The emphasis is on winning strategies that have worked for them; the approaches, techniques, and/or teaching styles they consider to be instrumental to their success in the classroom. While they may utilize specific subject-matter examples to illustrate their points, the emphasis will on pedagogical approaches to improving education in our profession. The goal is to share ideas on what successful teachers are doing in and out of the classroom to facilitate learning. Contributions from audience members, in the form of shared experiences, questions, and observations, are both welcomed and considered a key part of this organized symposium. The session will open with a brief introduction and overview (five minutes) by the moderator. Each of the three presenters will then briefly comment on their successful strategies (15 minutes each) after which the moderator will facilitate a discussion among the presenters and the audience (40 minutes). Presenters are expected to provide the audience with written outlines of their major points.

The project will create learning outcomes for knowledge, skill and experiential learning; and solicit input and reviews by a wide range of stakeholders; specifically addressing the challenges set forth by the NRC and subsequent responses to the study. The project will identify some common knowledge and skill areas that faculty and alumni believe all students should possess when they complete an agribusiness degree. In this sense, the effort is similar to the certification goals that business schools have. We are not, however, creating a review and certification mechanism at this point, we’re just trying to find common ground in the key knowledge and skill areas. The development of AAEA recognized learning outcomes will allow department administrators a list of outcomes that can be used in whole or modified to fit particular programs. Most faculty value alumni and agribusiness leaders’ inputs into the development of these outcomes. As a result the project will incorporate this input as appropriate. The scope of the project is national in scale, with a pilot study to be conducted in conjunction with the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at Colorado State University (CSU). The faculty at CSU have already begun planning a meeting with alumni to work on its undergraduate curriculum review. This will help leverage the funds allocated to the project. The project will cover all undergraduate food and agribusiness management degrees by setting national guidelines that can be modified to fit the needs of specific programs.