Specific student learning outcomes for course and assessment or evidence of accomplishment
| Botanic | |
|---|---|
| Outcomes | Assessment |
| Identify local plants by local and scientific names. | Midterm features a practicum component.
Hikes also include question and answer using plants in the field. These field experiences are documented primarily photographically. Theoretically these oral field experiences would be best documented as videos, but storage and sharing of the documentation is considered to be problematic. Generating web pages with static images appears to be a reasonable compromise. Ultimately the only way to assess the assessment would be for an assessor to take students back into the field and query the students on the plant names. Presentations of healing, food, and material culture plants also includes local names and scientific names. This material is then assessed on tests and the midterm. |
| Compare and contrast the distinguishing reproductive characteristics of different phyla of plants including mosses, seedless vascular plants, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. | The seedless vascular plant presentations material was assessed in part by questions on test one. Student groups also presented material on gymnosperm, angiosperm life cycles and gymnosperm leaf types. Assessment of gymnosperms included material on the midterm. |
| Label the key morphological features of the different phyla of plants including mosses, seedless vascular plants, gymnosperms, and angiosperms including the morphology of the reproductive structures. | The students produced labeled diagrams for seedless vascular plants, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. Walks were taken during which vegetative morphology and floral morphology were dialoged. |
| Ethnographic | |
| Outcomes | Assessment |
| Communicate and describe the healing uses of local plants and the cultural contexts in which that healing occurs. | The students each brought a plant and gave a presentation to the class on the healing use of that plant. Notes on the presentations as evidence of this outcome are available. |
| Contribute, participate in, and experience eating local food made from plants and describe the production process. | Students brought in foods, described the production process, and experienced eating those foods in a set of food presentations. |
| Communicate and describe the use of plants for transportation, for shelter, and in other material culture applications. | A lecture-discussion was engaged in on the ways in which plants provide housing, shelter, furnishing, tools, transportation, clothing, decoration, adornment, traditional cosmetic compounds, tatoos, and handicrafts. The class visited a virgin coconut oil processing plant to observe an economically productive use of plants in the realm of material culture. Students made presentations on the
material cultural uses of plants in their cultures. Spring 2004 presentations. Spring 2003 presentations |
| Describe and observe the use, role, and importance of psychoactive plants within their traditional ceremonial cultural contexts. | Images from a traditional cultural ceremony. |
| [optional] Participate in the development and maintenance of an ethnobotanical garden. | Diagram of garden. Ethnogardening fall 2006. |
Ethnobotany • Botanical herbarium • Ethnobotanical herbarium • Lee Ling • COMFSM
