Questions From Jorge Recinos (Verònica Donahue & Paul Longo)

Your case response, which keenly attempts to account for the cultural and linguistic differences that characterize the students I work with, is comprehensive and thorough. You make an effort to assess English language skills, as well as those in Spanish to some extent. You incorporate interactive learning opportunities so that the students can develop interpersonal skills among themselves by means of paired work and role playing. You propose to extend these opportunities into the community in terms of "real world, familiar, and simple farm situation;" however, I would like to know a little more about how you intend to do this.

What you propose from a cognitive perspective within the formal learning setting appears strong and, as I mentioned, your sense of the students' cultural and linguistic uniquenesses is noteworthy. What would you do to provide these students with some actual, structured access to the targeted community beyond the confines of the learning environment? You mention that FAYAP is hiring someone with mentoring skills. How can this person's mentoring skills be more fully, yet realistically, utilized in your design?

Jorge Recinos

Dear Jorge,

1. How to extend the opportunities mentioned in the design in terms of "real world, familiar, and simple farm situations".

The instructional design is actually structured so that the students have multiple opportunities to access the community of farmers and farm managers and I will explain that more in depth later on, when I answer your two other questions.

In the particular design strategy mentioned for these interactive exercises, the interactive exercises work as follows:

Every "lesson" (dealing with a specific topic area on the theme of IPM) will begin with an audio/visually presented situation that portrays how an aspect of IPM impacts a farmer or farm manager. Ideally, the farmer or farm manager will be an innovator using IPM. The situation will be presented via the Internet, using audio, still pictures and some video where appropriate, such as in interviews with a farmer or a farm manager. The situation is authentic, and based in the farming community. The goal of the situation is to "take students" to that location, and have them experience a real world example with its corresponding sights and sounds. The situation will integrate a range of the real world elements that are related- previous crop damage, economic impact, implementation and effects of IPM, management issues, etc. These situations will introduce terminology and concepts that the learners are unfamiliar with, and they will also set the context for the remaining instruction for that "lesson". These situations can be replayed as many times as necessary in order for the learners to get a full understanding of them.

Once the learners finish viewing the situation they will work with peers and their in-class mentor/teacher to:

• identify and clarify unfamiliar terms used. The learners will work in teams on the on-line glossary with Spanish support in order to find the definitions of the terms.
• identify key concepts. With the mentor/teacher acting as a coach, learners will discuss the situation and identify the key concepts in it. They will be coached into tapping into each others existing knowledge to try and develop as full an understanding as possible on what the key concepts are
• establishing a base of prior knowledge from which to tackle the problem posed and the instructional components to come. This approach should be effective because the focus group you and I conducted with the learners showed that they had a lot of existing anecdotal knowledge about farm management they had acquired from their families.

2. How the design will provide access to the targeted community beyond the confines of the learning environment.

I am interpreting the "targeted community" as that of the farmers and I hope that I am correct in this assumption. The way that farmers will be included is as follows:

For each IPM theme, we will identify farmers or farm managers who know about the issue and who ideally are innovators in this area. One of the mentors could be the individual portrayed in the situations that set the context for each theme.

Students will communicate with these mentors by phone, gathering information and asking questions to help them in the instructional sections. The goal is for them to begin to develop a relationship of trust with their mentor. In addition, actual contact with the learner and their mentor will be arranged so that the learner goes to spend a day with their mentor- allowing them to have first hand experience of how the farm function from the point of view of their mentor. Finally, these mentors will play a role in the end of course distribution of certificates of accomplishment to the students, providing closure to their experience.

3. The question on FAYAP hiring someone with mentoring skills, and how can these skills be more fully utilized.

The individual hired needs to have extensive and intimate experience with the target audience, and ideally will speak Spanish. Actually, I was going to talk to YOU about doing this Jorge, you would be perfect. If not, I see your playing an important role in helping us hire someone for this position.

The mentor will be present while the learners are doing the instruction, coaching them through the knowledge building process, mediating them in role playing activities, helping them with the computer technology, clarifying questions and concerns as well as encouraging them in making and maintaining contact with their farmer or farm manager mentors. The "in class" mentor plays a crucial role in helping guide these students through the learning experience.

I hope I have addressed your concerns, they were valid and gave me an opportunity to express the details of the design more clearly.

Give a call if you have any further questions.

Julie

Questions From Stewart Washington (Steve Ehrmann)

Dear Julie,

I'm on the run so this note might seem brusque. I must confess that I'm disappointed in your proposal. I thought you understood that a CD-ROM represented a great chance for our office to make a splash and gather funds. I don't understand how you could have lost track of the main issue here. Your proposal doesn't represent the kind of cutting edge work I thought you were capable of; instead it seems rather diffuse and mushy, and too low tech. Please reconsider your plan and let me know how you might revise it to meet our major objectives. Keep the vision squarely before you!

Stewart

Dear Stew,

The Web is the hottest delivery medium around. Schools, libraries and other institutions are increasingly providing Web accessibility. In addition, the number of private companies using the Web for advertising as well as internal communication is growing at an amazing rate. Even President Clinton has initiated a goal to get all schools wired.

In addition, developing Web pages provides the same functionality as a CD-ROM but is cheaper to produce. The Web is also more accessible for the participants since the donated computers did not include CD-ROM drivers. If we use CD-ROMs, we will have to purchase CD-ROM drives for each of the computers at a cost of approximately $300.00 each.

The Web is also more accessible for possible donors as many of them may not have CD-ROM drivers. It is more likely for an organization or company to have Web access. Therefore, we would receive much greater exposure and an increase in visibility for both the project and the Learning Center. Anyone who happens to be searching on a related key word could come across the project.

Furthermore, since this is a pilot project, we will undoubtedly have updates.

This is fairly simple to do on the Web; however, we would have to burn a new CD- ROM every time we had changes or updates if we choose that medium. This could become extremely costly.

It is also important to note that our major objectives should be centered on the learners. In using an innovative constructivistic instructional design, I feel we are creating a rich learning environment for our target audience. I've included such elements as cognitive apprenticeship, mentoring, scaffolding, contextualized knowledge building, and collaborative learning.

I hope this helps to alleviate some of your concerns. If you still feel that you would like a CD-ROM, we could place all the materials that we produce throughout the project on a CD-ROM for distribution. However, we would still need to address the issue of cost.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Julie