Animal Ecology and Forestry
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Learner Outcomes Assessment Portfolio
Recent Changes as a Result of Outcomes Assessment
As a result of recent assessment of communications outcomes for the forestry major, changes have been made to Forestry 203, Forestry 204, Forestry 205, and Forestry 454.
To provide students with more practice in writing and revising portions of written management plans, students are now required to write a draft and revisions of two sections of their overall management report in Forestry 203. Those sections deal with adequacy of regeneration in the forest for which they are preparing a management plan, and with total harvest volumes available in the forest. The initial draft is reviewed by the instructor of 203 and returned to students with suggestions for revisions. The revised draft is then resubmitted for final grade. The revised drafts ultimately become part of the overall management plan presented in Forestry 205.
Changes have been made in Forestry 204 to provide students with more time to improve and revise both oral and written portions of their management plan, the magnitude of the management plan has been reduced and more emphasis has been placed on higher quality oral and written communications that are produced, assessed, and revised throughout the semester.
Forestry 205 has been modified to provide students with more time to develop their final oral presentation. An intermediate team oral presentation is video-taped and the teams are critiqued. Based on that initial oral presentation the student submit a revised PowerPoint presentation and meet with the instructor to “post-process” the revised presentation. Additional faculty-evaluated practice sessions have been incorporated into the course to provide students with more feedback on the quality of their presentations and to provide suggestions for improvement prior to final presentation to faculty and guests.
In Forestry 454, a Capstone Written Report Communication Rubric has been introduced to provide better guidance to students as they develop the final written report for their clients.
