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Sara Delaney's avatar

I like how this assignment requires the students to engage with the trade-offs inherent in agricultural design, even if "only in simulation".

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Eugene Law's avatar

This is such a cool project for your class, Ann! Once you've implemented the new cropping systems trials, will future students still be designing cropping systems in your class, or will their involvement with the Agroecology Education Farm and Agronomy Field Lab be different? I'm considering how I can incorporate more experiential learning into my classes and I would love to hear your ideas!

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Ann Bybee-Finley's avatar

Great question, Eugene! The students really seem to enjoy creating so I would like to keep the design project--but perhaps allow students to choose their own location. Once the systems go into effect, you'd better believe there will be student collected long-term data! I have big dreams, including an R shiny app/data dashboard that would track numbers so the public or other classes could see too.

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Sara Delaney's avatar

oooh, sounds awesome.

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Kyle Karnuta's avatar

Thank you for this post, Ann, and for educating a young and hopeful generation of agroecologists. "In this time of abrupt change, I would like to shout from the rooftops that meaningful change often begins with something small, slow, and iterative. Change doesn’t have to be disruptive to be meaningful." This really resonated with me.

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Ann Bybee-Finley's avatar

Thank you, Kyle. Some of the best words of wisdom I have gotten was, 'good soup takes time.'

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