Development of Agronomy Feeds the World Module for the Planting Science Program.

The PlantingScience (PS) program is an online learning community whose goal is to address the crucial and growing need for improved STEM literacy among K-12 students. Through open inquiry and guidance from scientist mentors, students design and conduct hands-on research projects. While PS has traditionally focused on plant biology, a need for agronomy outreach programs and a partnership with the American Society of Agronomy has led to the development of the “Agronomy Feeds the World” PS module. In order to develop an effective module based on student and teacher interests, a survey was conducted of current PS teachers.  A total of 44 teachers from the PS community completed the survey, primarily from suburban schools. PlantingScience teachers indicated they would implement the agronomy module into traditional science courses (i.e., biology and earth science).  When asked to choose broad topics of interest for the new module, teachers ranked “Water Matters”, “Future of Agronomy”, and “Soil” over "Crops", "Pests", and "Livestock".  Teachers also ranked real-world science experience, hands-on inquiry for students, and completion of lab-based experiments as the most important program outcomes. Additionally, there was interest in connecting students with agronomists via the internet or internships. Based on these survey results, the PS Agronomy Feeds the World team has developed a comprehensive, hands-on agronomy module that best represents interests indicated in the survey. The “Agronomy Feeds the World” module will be tested in fall 2016 in 5 pre-selected classrooms and will be fully integrated with current PS modules in spring 2017.