STUDENT BACKGROUND /ASSIGNING STUDENTS TO GROUPS

Contents

1. The questionnaire
2. Summary Statistics
3. Assignment to Groups

The quesstionnaire

Please provide the information requested below. It will be used to help me decide on what criteria I should use to form the groups, also, it informs me of the general range of backgrounds, interests and talents in the class. The information will be confidential and not used otherwise.

Name:
e mail:
Degree:
Year:
Part time/Full time:

If you are doing Honors degree research, what is the topic of your thesis?
Highschool (town and province or country ):

Check off any biology classes you have taken from the following list:

• 2002 Terrestrial Diversity
• 202 Cell
• 2030 Geneticsa
• 2060 Ecology
• 2101 Microbial Diversity
• 3041 Evolution
• 3060 Environmental Ecology
• 3061 Community Ecology
• 3062 Behavioural Ecology
• 3063 Resource Ecology
• 3066 Plant Ecology
• 3069 Population Ecology
• 3070 Animal Physiology
• 3218 Plant Systematics
• 3220 Land Plants
• 32321 Invertebrates
• 3601 Nature Conservation
• 3614 Field Ecology
• Math classes (give number taken)
• Geology Classes (give number taken)

Computing Science classes (Give number taken):

Familiarity with

• HTML none_____ some________ lots________
• JAVA none_____ some________ lots________
• PHOTOSHOP none_____ some________ lots________

Other media experience (eg journalism):
Do you have a computer of your own, or one you can access regularly?
Type/ RAM:
Internet Browser type:

Have you worked on a farm or had other experience related directly to agriculture or horticulture?

On the other side, comment as you wish on any special interests related to this class

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Summary Statistics

• BA: 2 students, in years 2, 4 of their degrees
• BSc:
  • 2 in Year 1 (Accepted as Mature students)
  • 3 in Year 2
  • 7 in Year 3
  • 12 in Year 4

Number of Relevant Classes, excluding Computer Sciences

• 0-1 class: 3 students
• 2-5 classes: 6 students
• 5-8 classes: 4 students
• 9-12 classes: 11 students
• 13+ classes: 2 students

Computer Science classes:
5 students had taken one class in CS, one student had taken 2

Experience in Agriculture:

• 3 had worked on farms
• 5 had worked in government or NGO projects relating to Agriculture
• 1 had worked in landscaping

Multimedia skills:

• 1 student was a TA in a Computer Lab and had a working knowledge of HTML and Photoshop;
• 5 students said they had some familiarity with HTML, and 6 cited some familiarity with Photoshop, however on questioning, none considered themselves comfortable working in these media

Access to computers:
3 students did not have computers at home, 23 did; of the latter 9 were connected to the WWW

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3. Assigning students to groups:

I had anticipated that assignment to groups would be based primarily on multimedia skills, however only one student had any working experience in this area. Likewise, only a few students had direct familiarity with agriculture. However there was more or less a continuous spectrum of variation in regard to the most pertinent academic background (as measured the number of relevant classes), hence these figures were used as a basis for forming groups.

Students were asked to add up the number of relevant classes they had checked off, to write the number down on a piece of paper, and then to place themselves in a row ordered according to this number. Then beginning at one end of the line, they numbered themselves 1,2,3,4,5, 1,2,3,4,5...and so on. All number 1s joined one group, number 2s another and so on. This gave us three groups of 5 students, and two with 6 (27 students initially). One student dropped out later, giving us groups of 5 or 6 students. In each of two groups, one student participated very little, and in one group a student was absent for much of the time because of illness. Hence we ended up with functional group sizes of 4 to 5.

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