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Archbold Project FIRST
May Workshop: MAERC background

"Faculty workshops in field
ecology at Archbold:
an opportunity to enrich the
teaching of ecology for your
undergraduate students"

Project First at Archbold Biological Station
Background

This exercise was designed to put workshop participants in the same position students are usually in - one of little knowledge. We spent a morning out at the MacArthur Agro-ecology Research Center, a full-scale working cattle ranch. Since few participants knew much about cattle ranching we used an evaluation exercise known as a background probe to assess their level of knowledge. The probe assessed factual knowledge about the beef cattle industry in Florida and operations on a working cattle ranch. Team members were surprisingly good-willed about submitting to this (its not a test) although somewhat chagrined at their lack of knowledge (I deliberately lost their scores but they were <50%). We then used a brief slide show to help correct the team's misconceptions about cattle ranching revealed in their background probe answers.

  1. Satellite map of region - location of Ranch and issues facing region.
  2. Map of ranch -mission of site, parties involved
  3. Working cattle ranch - size, number, breeds, cow-calf operation etc.
  4. Wildlife projects - red-shouldered hawk tracking
  5. Ag. operations - stocking densities
  6. Fire operations and fertilizer regimes map
  7. Economics of a ranch
  8. Map of experimental pastures, hypotheses, factors being measured
  9. Flume site - what measured
10. Diagram of all ecosystem processes involved in cattle grazing experiment

Minute Paper
  • After the presentation we used a Minute Paper technique (3 x 5 card) in which each participant took one minute to write down answers to 1-2 questions:
    1. "What was the most important thing that you learned from this presentation"
    2. "What important question remains unanswered?"
    3. Develop openness to new ideas
  • Improve listening skills
  • Quick very simple way to get feedback
  • Learn to appreciate important contributions to this subject
  • This was followed by a 1 hour tour of MAERC in which we continued to address any background probe questions not covered in the talk and remaining questions raised in the minute papers.