Bio: Michelle Worosz is a Professor of Rural Sociology in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology. She also serves as the co-Director of the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Sociology. In this post, we feature Michelle’s multi-layered food security assignment which scaffolds learning in RSOC 3190: Food, Agriculture, and Society.
Context
RSOC 3190 is a writing-intensive, upper-level course focused on the history and current trends of agrifood systems—in other words, how society produces and consumes food. In addition to providing students with a framework for interpreting agrifood policies and politics, Worosz has designed the course to give students a foundation in research methods via case study focused on food security in Alabama’s Black Belt region.
Throughout the semester, students engage in primary and secondary data collection, analysis, and interpretation as well as the presentation of research findings. Four inter-related units divided into eight assignments scaffold students’ learning of these course goals. The assignments ask students to develop and adapt their knowledge of agrifood systems as they grapple with and create datasets to explore a complex case study and consider how to convey their findings to peers in a short, multimodal presentation and a formal report written for a professional audience (county government officials, public health and food security advocates, and leaders of civic organizations).
RSOC 3190 is taken by a range of students as rural sociology has no major at Auburn. Worosz hopes students who leave the class will understand the breadth of data sources available; how to access and use some of these existing resources (like Census and USDA and library databases); and how to apply data to make an evidence-based argument.
Bloom's Taxonomy and Scaffolding
Bloom's Taxonomy is typically represented as a colorful pyramid of verbs. It displays different levels of cognitive learning, ranging from the more basic ability to remember content to more complex actions like application, analysis, evaluation, and creation.
Scaffolding can help students move to more challenging demonstrations of knowledge mastery because it systematically supports students as they move away from problems they can solve independently and towards a level of problem solving and critical thinking that they can do only with the support of a teacher or expert peer (for more on this, see Vygotsky, 1978).
In Worosz’s course design, individual assignments are integrated to build students’ abilities to extend and apply their content knowledge in increasingly complex ways. So, while the first assignment asks students to describe data, the subsequent assignments take up more complex demonstrations of knowledge such as analysis, application, evaluation, and creation. Each assignment aligns with lectures and readings so that assignments and content are integrated. The rest of this blog describes each section and assignment in greater detail.
The Scaffolded Assignment Series
Section I: Setting Background
In this unit, students collect and interpret data from the Alabama Department of Archives and History database, the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Factfinders database, the USDA Census of Agriculture database, the University of Alabama’s Maps website, the Encyclopedia of Alabama, and the Bibliography of Counties to understand, describe and report on existing data.
In the first assignment, students work with research librarians to craft a historical narrative that describes a county in Alabama and includes a table of sociodemographics, accompanying text, and a map.
The second assignment has students compile six years of data from the county into a raw data Excel file, create two figures from the new dataset, and compose a text that explains these data and relates them to national trends. Each six-year data set is aligned to a particular historical event (e.g., the Depression, WWII, the farm crisis), and students apply their knowledge from lectures and readings to explain why these data look as they do during this particular time period.
Section II: Field Work
Next, students go out into the world to collect data thereby executing and applying data collection and organization techniques.
In assignment three, students explore their personal food buying and consumption habits by recording what, how, and where they buy their food and tracing their food’s production history to parent companies using Hoover’s database. Worosz notes that the project teaches students a great deal about themselves: how much they actually spend on food, how many calories they consume, why they eat out and choose fast food so often, and where their food comes from. By encountering different databases across assignments, students are exposed to a wide range of search processes and data types; thus, instead of leaving the class knowing how to use a single database, students develop data literacy, which is more transferable to their areas of study and professions.
While assignment three asks them to internally reflect on their purchasing habits, assignment four has students survey food outlets to discover food availability, national store distribution, and the transportation consumers would need to get to these locations. Again, the findings students reach can be a reality check, and Worosz is pleased to see how their data-informed findings can counter previously held assumptions and biases. In both assignments, students create data along with a document describing these data.
Section III: Consumption
In assignment five, students download raw data sets from a USDA website and create a clean national, county-level data set by identifying data that are meaningful to their analysis, eliminating unnecessary data, and re-establishing variable codes. While each assignment deals with data interpretation, this process of creation is more complex than working from secondary and primary data.
This is an important aspect of instructional scaffolding: as students progress through assignments, they work with data in increasingly challenging ways.
Section IV: Analysis
In the analysis unit, students use data they have collected, collating multiple sources of data into group datasets.
Assignment six asks students to identify specific concepts from their readings and then apply the concepts to their case using their combined data to form evidence-based statements.
In assignment seven, groups synthesize their collective findings and investigate their impact on the Alabama Black Belt region. In addition to developing a master dataset, the groups create a “substantive, PowerPoint presentation” that connects these data to their readings and includes data visualizations such as graphs, tables, and figures.
Assignment eight is a formal report that assembles all of the previously collected data to define and describe three elements: (1) food security at societal and community levels; (2) descriptions of the county’s background, structure of agriculture, and food access and availability; and (3) a contextualized discussion of these findings. Groups create data visualizations as a part of this final report, as well.
Student Responses to Scaffolding
Over 3 years, 40 students have completed this assignment sequence. When asked what skills from this class they transfer to other courses and/or their professions, students said (these are direct quotes):
Long term planning and group communication. Before this semester I had never had a semester long project and I think it has been good for me to learn how to budget a long term project into my daily life.
With every assignment we had to sift through large amounts of data, and I learned how to better sort and understand it.
I feel most important, I got to interact with raw, "real world" data collection, teaching me how to concentrate and be patient when it comes to projects and assignments.
I will definitely use my research skills in the future. I feel like I have solidified some methods to find information, making the internet a more useful place for me.
Two skills that I have gained are the ability to collect and combine data from multiple sources and present findings to a professional audience.
I will be careful not to generalize concepts such as poverty and food security and make sure to understand that those concepts are different for every community I do research in.
Advice for Scaffolding
For teachers hoping to better scaffold across their courses, Worosz suggests starting with a clear vision of your goals for the project. Her own goals included not only the substantive material, but also the technical (e.g., downloading and manipulating data, creating spreadsheets, developing visual representations of data), and cognitive skills (e.g., critical thinking, info literacy). Align these goals with the content in your courses. Then, ask how each assignment supports the goals and content.
Because scaffolded assignments are time- and effort-intensive, they should have clear connection to real world problems and professional practices. While it is true that some material has to be sacrificed to carry out semester-long projects, scaffolded assignment series deepen student learning and connect the content of the course (e.g., lectures and readings) to application and practice, which can be meaningful for students.
These projects carry heavy loads for instructional support, so find collaborators. Worosz works with Auburn’s research librarians to help students understand data sources, data collection, data storage, and data access. In learning about data, it’s important that students understand data are imperfect and findings are often reliant on methods of interpretation.
Worosz says, “ The focus of the project, however, is for students to learn how to evaluate a complex problem that is embedded in an even more complex context. With the help of the research Librarians, we facilitate students’ movement away from simplistic and monocausal thinking and toward systems thinking. In this process I want them to learn about the importance of comprehensive assessment before throwing potentially ineffective solutions at a problem.”
From a practical standpoint, faculty need to be organized and attentive. For a series of scaffolded assignments to be successful, you will need to think through all the steps in advance with ample anticipation and planning for complications. A successfully scaffolded course requires clear, extensive instructions, due dates positioned at regular intervals, and a commitment to providing at least some feedback on each assignment that will provide necessary support, guidance, and reassurance.
Want to learn more about scaffolding writing? Come check out the WriteBites Scaffolding Writing panel on October 30th 2019 from 11:30-1:00 in the ePortfolio Studio, RBD Library. This even will include lunch.
This panel will feature faculty who use scaffolding to support writing-related learning goals. We will talk about scaffolding in three ways: (1) scaffolding an assignment to invite students to write for different audiences and purposes, (2) scaffolding a course's learning goals across a semester, (3) scaffolding writing plan goals across a program's curricula. In illustrating different scopes for scaffolding, faculty in attendance will discuss how to identify and develop meaningful opportunities for scaffolding.
This panel will also feature…
Robert Boyd, Biological Sciences Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, who will be sharing how he scaffolds an assignment to invite students to write for different audiences and purposes
Lindsay Tan, W. Allen and Martha Reimer Reed Associate Professor in the Department of Consumer and Design Sciences and Interior Design Coordinator, who will be discussing how to scaffold a writing plan’s learning goals across a program’s curricula
Click here to register for the event.
References
Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. (2019). Bloom's taxonomy. Licensed under CC BY 2.0. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/90729502@N05/29428436431
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.