Taking the ethnobotany field final paperless

From 2002 to 2008 the ethnobotany final examination was a written essay question. The essays, however, were not well done and felt inauthentic to the course. Then a purported researcher with expertise in botany arrived on island. They reached out to me in their first couple of weeks on island and asked for a tour of the nascent ethnobotanical garden the class had been assembling over the prior few terms. 

Norma and Cassandra spring 2009

I was looking forward to getting assistance from the researcher as there were still some plants I had yet to be able to identify. I had some ideas as to what they might be, but I really wanted a second opinion. Of course there were also some plants in the garden for which I was certain of the scientific name. 

As we toured the garden the researcher appeared quite excited to be there. I asked about the names of some of the plants, and the researcher was happy to help. The researcher reeled off scientific names. I was caught off guard when none of the names matched what I knew, even for plants for which I was certain. I found myself saying, "But isn't that Senna alata? Isn't that Campnosperma brevipetiolata? Isn't that Clerodendrum inerme?" and with each question the researcher responded, "Yeah, you're probably right, could be that." By the end of our walk I realized that the researcher was apparently making up names that sounded scientific but were not actual names of plants. I was stunned. Needless to say the researcher had a rather short tenure on island. They did not have the knowledge or credentials that they claimed to have.

That event immediately told me what the final would look like. Students would walk the garden and provide their local names for a plant along with being able to at least recognize the scientific name and the ethnobotanical use of the plant. As I noted to the class, "You should be able to walk through your forest and know the names of the plants and their uses such that others are impressed with your knowledge."

The first finals were just twelve plants, and a list of scientific names was provided for the student's reference. There was no intent to have them memorize the scientific names. The local name would be the name in their own language. The Latin name list length exceeded the number of plants, so the students would have to at least recognize some of the scientific names.

The final would evolve over the years until by fall 2019 the final included 22 plants and 88 scientific names. One of the challenges that had arisen, however, was the enormous churn in scientific names that was sweeping through botany. Plants were changing scientific names as many times as twice in one term. Keeping up with the churn was challenging. The online text, handouts, and other materials were in need of continuous updating - because the scientific name is the scientific name. I cannot decide I don't like a particular change that has been accepted by the field and just keep using the pre-existing name. I decided that the churn ultimately meant memorizing any scientific name was an endeavor best left to professional botanists, not ethnobotany class students in a non-major three credit science elective course. Thus the scientific names were dropped.

The final was now two questions per plant. One question on the local name and the second question on the local use, paralleling the two course level learning outcomes.

1. Identify local plants, their reproductive strategies, and morphology.
2. Communicate and describe the cultural use of local plants for healing, as food, as raw materials, and in traditional social contexts. 

The final was still a field final often done under wet, rainy, tropical conditions. Students would work on a scratch copy of the final examination sheet in the field and then the class would find shelter and the students could produce a cleaner and drier paper for submission. 

This term the driving theme has been to go paperless. The in-class tests were already online and thus paperless, a hangover from the pandemic online version of the course. There had been an online final, but that was functionally just the last unit test, not an attempt to mimic the field finals of the past. 

This term the ethnobotany class final is the last final examination in my courses that is on paper. Moving this online had become a priority. 

The complication is that students in course come from different islands each with their own language and their own mix of plants. While this has always been a complication, manual grading allowed me to accommodate this complexity during manual marking. With the final in Canvas LMS, these accommodations would have to be built in. 

The local names could be obtained from dictionaries for some of the languages, but not all have a dictionary and even those that have a dictionary often have variant orthographies that are still accepted. 

I started from an online Woleian dictionary as I knew that an atoll would be a strong limiter on which plants I could include on the final. The online dictionary also made finding plant names easier. For Ulithian there was no comprehensive online dictionary, I had to get a hold of a print copy which proved somewhat limited in terms of botanic vocabularly. 

Rotating the earlier grid provided a list of plant names by species in a vertical column facilitating building of the final examination.

Because these orthographies are phonetic there can be multiple accepted spellings for a word, each reflecting a particular dialectical pronunciation of the word. Spelling varies with pronunciation. This meant I had to assemble and release lists of plant names so the students could see the orthography the test was using. For example, apwech and apuoch are both accepted names of the same plant and differ in pronunciation. 

Question pairs were then composed. The second question would be multiple choice. In the paper based final this was an open answer, in the online final I chose to move to multiple choice. The final in this course comes in at roughly 10% of the overall course points, significant but not overwhelmingly so. A student in good standing can have a bad day on the final and still survive the course, but by the same token a student below 50% coming into the final also cannot save themselves. The course rewards a steady contribution of work over the 16 week term, not a one day heroic performance. The final can neither make nor break a student.

A practice pair of questions was released for students in order for them to be familiar with the format and to test their own mobile device. 

On the actual final question pairs appear as above. Questions are in the order in which I anticipate encountering the plant on campus during the field walk.

The final may see some plants encountered out of sequence when a plant is not where the plant has been in the past. The list of questions and numbers will be used to handle out of sequence plants.