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The Purdue University College of Agriculture has a long history of
impacting research, education and cooperative extension to improve
agriculture and the role of agriculture in our society.
One of the ways that we continue to do that is in this
realm of digital agriculture.
It's the fusing of our physical and
social worlds to make improved data-driven decisions and actions.
So you'll see a website up there in the corner,
we encourage you to visit that purdue.ag/digag.
I'm Dennis Buckmaster, a professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering.
I also serve our dean and our associate deans as a Dean's Fellow for
Digital Agriculture to coordinate activities in the college,
at the university and through to external stakeholders regarding data-driven,
technology intensive agriculture.
One of the projects that we have is the Wabash Heartland Innovation Network.
The WHIN project is not exclusively a Purdue project.
It is a partnership with WHIN the organization,
the community foundations in a 10 county region of West Central Indiana.
Of course, Purdue as well as Ivy Tech Community College and
many partner organizations, farms, manufacturing firms, etc.
The focus of the WHIN project is to increase the role of
advanced technology in agriculture and manufacturing.
In this series of brief presentations, you're going to learn
how the WHIN funds are being used to advance the technology in agriculture.
So whether this particular video covers the capturing, the clustering,
the collecting or the computing, you'll have to wait to see.
But in each of these cases,
we are improving forward the technology in agriculture through digital means.
>> Greeting everyone.
I'm Hui-Hui Wang, the project director of WHIN with LOCAL STEM.
Data-driven problem solving using
agriculture food natural resources challenge.
As you can see in this project, we have many experts involved.
That is Neil Knobloch, Roger Tormoehlen, Petrus Langenhoven,
Betty Feng, undergraduate students, Bryanna Nelson.
So what is LOCAL STEM?
LOCAL STEM means Land-grant Outreach for Community-based Agricultural Learning for
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education.
We hope this project can change the traditional way how STEM and
agriculture teachers teach the subject area by bringing
more real-word authentic, agricultural food,
natural resources, engineering design challenge to their students.
And we hope those students can learn more through those STEM
experiential learning experience.
This is the model that we use to structure WHIN LOCAL STEM projects.
The model is developed by myself and my colleague, Dr. Neil Knobloch.
As you can see the bottom layer represent the traditional way how STEM started and
agriculture being taught in high school setting.
The second layer represent potential opportunity by STEM teachers and
agricultural teachers can collaborate co developed their
integrated STEM through agriculture for natural resources, curriculum instruction.
The third layer represent agro-ecosystem thinking.
When you think about WHIN solving a real-world agriculture for
natural resources problem, those four components
naturally plays a very important role in the problem solving process,
which they are social responsibility,
economic viability, production efficiency, environmental sustainability.
But what holds the foundation or the key to solving the problem,
which scientists of course, that's data.
So the thing that decision making is on the top of this model.
Whenever you're trying to decide a solutions or
make decisions on how to solve this problem, data plays a very important role
in the problem solving process also in this model.
By participating in this project, we hope we can create a small learning
community for STEM and agriculture teacher they can collaborate with
the Purdue scientists to core develops and designed their integrated STEM for
agriculture for natural resources curriculum instruction.
And we hope teachers will use in the real-world research data and results that
provide by Purdue scientists to facilitate a learning experience for their students.
And of course, by doing so, we hope students can practice problem-solving
skills that is very important for the 21st century workforce skills.
The project has this three stage.
In the summer, we will provide professional development program for
teachers.
And after that, during the fall semester, teachers start working
together as an interdisciplinary team to developed their lesson.
Then they will implement their lesson in spring semester.
So the project's Summer Professional Development that we have done in 2019,
there are three topic areas involved, which are hydroponics,
agricultural robotics, and food safety and technology.
Three high school participate in this project.
They are Benton Central, Tri-County, and Frontier High School.
Total we have 8 teachers, 4 agriculture teachers, 3 science teachers and
1 technology teachers participated in the project.
The bottom are some of the photos that we took in a professional
development program.
So after teacher have found their professional
development program in summer, here is the project update.
One being Benton Central teacher.
So what she did is she chose the hydroponics is a topic, and
she implement utilize integrated STEM curriculum just for
herself because one of the teacher actually dropped.
Then she actually really liked the project and she receiving
the funding from the school that helped her install a hydroponic system
in agriculture classroom, so she can utilize that as a laboratory and
helping her students to learnt hydroponics and
spent content knowledge that imbedded in the hydroponics.
Tri-County teachers are three teachers that they focus on the food science and
safety.
So in biology class, the biology teacher tell how germs growth and
in agriculture teachers, the two of them, teaches how food safety and
the safety procedures when you prepare for.
And frontiers that I choose Ag robotics project.
So those three teachers actually rotate teach one class which is via two class.
And the topic focus on how agriculture robotics can
potentially be used to survey endangered species in Indiana.
So here is one pictures that Benton Central teachers send to us.
This is the new hydroponic system that she got a funding from a school and
then installed and then using as education tool to teach her students.
So what's the next step for this project?
We have already received USDA/NIFA PADL Grant to
continue this project from 2020 to 2023.
We hope we can finalize the material that Benton Central, Tri -County,
Frontier teachers develops and to share with other teachers who are interested
in using integrated STEM through FNR, this' type of teaching strategy.
We hope we can train and help those teachers become peer teachers or
educators that teach other teacher to use this type of material.
Also, we like'd to collect more data, and
then to think about what's the next step of the research that we'd like to come
back to help us to improve the model of LOCAL STEM?
Thank you very much.
>> Hui-Hui, thank you very much for that quick update with regard to your project.
Have just a couple questions.
And the first one would be, as you look at your project,
do you see that it's primarily about motivating these students to work with
data and problem solving in agriculture or
is it also very much about building their skills to be able to do these things?
>> I think it's more about building their skills to prepare them to
become more problem solver by using data strategy, motivating students.
Yes, I think that incorporates in the project because when you try to do
integrated STEM to agriculture for natural resources,
this type of real-world talent solving the real-world challenge,
that just motivates students because you using the project and
the problem that relevant to their everyday life.
By doing that the project particularly helping student process and
using their previous knowledge to try to solving the problem.
So I will say it will be more like building the scale to help the students
prepare them, equip them with the problem solving skill.
>> Okay, good.
And realizing that there were sort of three dimensions,
the food safety, the hydroponics, and
then the agricultural robotics, you can pick any one of those three.
What is the data aspect of these projects?
What elements of data will the students be measuring,
analyzing and using to improve the system?
>> Thank you for the question.
I think I'm gonna using hydroponics systems as an example.
>> Mm-hm. >> So the teacher we collaborate with,
she definitely, when she started the hydroponics systems,
she ask student majors and then design those hydroponic systems.
So, those are the data that they can use.
Plus that when they study germinate the seed and
to really start from the pre harvest to the post harvest,
all the stuff, they're involved in data.
Student need to measure the temperature,
need to calculate the nutrients when they're putting into the water,
that they use to grow their lattice, the pH and
even the energy conservation that they needed to think about,
because during the winter time they need it.
It's in the greenhouse type of a situation, but
they also needed to control the temperature during the winter time.
So I think those are the data helping them to increase the production of
the vegetables, and student need to using those data to make the decisions.
So, every step that they did,
they needed to really think about what kind of data they collected and
how can those data help them improve their design of the hydroponics and
then probably get more yield after vegetable that they grow.
>> Good, very good.
Well, I don't want to be too much of a Danny downer here, but
I also teach college level courses and
I find that sometimes the students just lack the math skills that I wish they had.
And so as these students do these projects,
do you have any evidence that the math co requisite is satisfied?
Are the teachers able to move forward like they would like?
Or are the students lacking math skills in order to truly
be the problem solvers that we would like them to be?
Yes, so that this is a very interesting question because I think
up to this point, the project they're in the early stage.
We hoping to getting more students data to kind of helping us understand how
students learn by using integrated STEM for FNR this type of teaching strategy.
Hearing from the teachers, they did talk about students really.
One of the effect of doing this is trying to help students using
more mathematics as well and then in a real-world setting.
So it's not just using the mathematics in the textbook, but
they can really apply their skills and in solving a problem where NFR students
are more interesting and then to see how the math can be used to solving a problem.
So I think we're moving to that direction and trying to get more data, and
then choose the core there.
But so far I [INAUDIBLE] deployed, sorry, I don't have more information for you.
>> That's very good.
I am hoping that our students get involved in projects like this,
that they find out that, that math is very practical.
And it does help me do the things that I really want to do.
So therefore, they will maybe be more motivated in the math realm.
I think it's a wonderful thing.
>> Thank you.
>> Well, again, thanks for
all of this and we look forward to more updates in the future.
>> Okay, thank you.