Page 16 - Campus Technology, October/November 2019

ONLINE LEARNING poll and follow it up with \[posting on\] a reflec- tion board,” Bauer explained. The latter served as a place where people could share feedback about a given lesson and ask questions, and where the professor could see where students were having trouble understanding the con- cepts and post extra examples. A WhatsApp chat group also allowed people to interact with the instructor and vice versa. In addition, the facilitators had dedicated biweekly calls with Education for Humanity to share feedback. Making the Most of What You Have Because many of these students already had agribusinesses of their own, the instruction was often immediately relevant. As Bauer noted, “Some of them went to market every Friday, and so they would use what they were learning there.” When a lesson worked, their successes showed up on the reflection board. She recalled one student who sold three products but announced that “now I understand that my honey actually sells the best and it takes less resources. I now can make more honey and actually make more money.” Another student wrote about how displaying carrots in a differ- ent way led to better sales. Besides the improvements in students’ mar- keting and financial analysis skills, an unexpect- ed outcome was a boost in digital literacy, Bauer noted. “Although the facilitators were actually in charge of powering up the boxes and being in charge of the technology, they really gave stu- dents the option to learn how it works, why it works that way and how the WiFi \[in Solar­ SPELL\] was different from the one that they may use to access the internet. We saw their confidence in their digital literacy levels improve, in terms of feeling comfortable in working with technology. And the facilitators were telling us about how excited students were to come in every day.” While Bauer estimated that the course mim- icked 97 percent of what was delivered to more traditional ASU students, the outcomes were 16 CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | Oct/Nov 2019