Kadjo selected for Wisconsin Teaching Fellow and Scholars Program

Dr. Lucie Kadjo, associate professor of agribusiness in the School of Agricultureat the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, has been selected for the 2024-2025 Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars Program. She is one of two UW-Platteville faculty members selected for the Universities of Wisconsin program this year.

Kadjo joined UW-Platteville in January 2016. She is the agribusiness program coordinator, advisor of the National Agri-Marketing Associationclub and teaches Marketing Management, Quantitative Methods, Introduction to Agribusiness, Consumer and Producer Cooperatives and Agricultural Marketing. Her research interests include marketing of agricultural products and demand and price analysis.

"It is essential for me to deliver interesting, engaging and effective lectures," said Kadjo. "In the classroom, I like to create a positive learning environment for my students by being enthusiastic about teaching and by generating discussions that trigger students' participation in class."

Kadjo says she subscribes to an interdisciplinary and global approach to agribusiness and frequently draws upon her diverse background in agricultural economics, her research and her own life experiences to make the materials more accessible and relevant for students. She believes face-to-face teaching can complement online teaching, through educational technologies, to bring about learning.

"I love interacting with students and the opportunity to work with them through student clubs and/or by attending conferences with them," said Kadjo. "I also love that UW-Platteville provides opportunities for faculty to attend and participate in professional development workshops and conferences such as WTFS."

Throughout the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars Program, participants are guided through the process of completing a scholarship of teaching and learning project. Kadjo said she longed to participate in the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars Program for years.

Kadjo said she recognizes that student attention, motivation and engagement during lectures are common challenges that instructors face when teaching. Another challenge instructors face is how to ensure that students understand the course materials and perform well during class assessments. Furthermore, during two semesters that Kadjo used iClicker, she noticed that students' response rates decrease the longer they are into a lecture, meaning that students do not consistently use the iClicker throughout the lecture and lose attention, motivation and engagement at some point.

To remedy those challenges - grab students' attention, ensure their understanding of the concepts and trigger their class participation - Kadjo has implemented many active learning practices, including iClicker, but has never assessed the effectiveness of those methods. The first objective of her scholarship of teaching and learning project is to assess whether the use of iClicker during lectures can increase students' attention span during lectures, better engage and motivate students and increase students' test performances. The second objective is to assess if there is a difference in the impacts of iClicker on students' attention span, motivation, engagement and test performance when iClicker is used as a tool for test taking versus when used as a tool for student engagement.

The Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars Programoffers UW faculty and teaching academic staff a unique opportunity to collaborate with other exceptional teachers from across the Universities of Wisconsin and from various disciplines, which many have found re-energized their work and transformed their approach to teaching and learning.