Week 12 - Cropping Systems

One of the classes that I am taking this semester is a senior level capstone course titled Cropping Systems.  The class is taught by Ed Deckard, one of my favorite professors at NDSU.  We meet on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  There are over 100 students in the class between the in-class section and the online section.

The class is taught in a group learning setting.  At the beginning of the semester we filled out a short survey describing our learning style and our preference for classmates that we would like to work with for the rest of the semester.  Ed took the information and divided our class into 17 teams.  Each of the teams included 5-6 students.

This is the first class that I have taken that has only been teamwork.  We do not complete any assignments as individuals.  It has taught me a lot about the importance of communication.  Each week we are presented with an agriculture problem and asked to come up with a conclusion as a team.  

This past week we had to create a crop plan for a farmer that had 6 fields under irrigation.  The farmer wanted to grow high value crops and we, as their "agronomist", had to come up with a plan for which crops we had to grow on his given fields.  This was an interesting problem because all of the members of my team had never dealt with irrigation before.

We were able to come up with a plan for our fields with the help of everyone in the group.  Each of my team members were assigned a task that they had to research before the next class period.  When we met the next time everyone had done their part of the assignment and we were able to teach each other about the areas that we had researched.  

I have learned a lot about how to work with others.  Prior to this class, I did not know many of the students that were in my group.  I am now very close friends with everyone in my team and we have learned a lot from each other.  In the future I am sure that I will be glad that I took this class because it will benefit my in my career.