Ethnobotany paperless field final

With the push to take all of my courses paperless, the last remaining piece of the paperless puzzle was the ethnobotany field final examination. The background to the final and the set up work for the ethnobotany field final were described in an earlier article. Facilitating the delivery of the final in the field was the acquisition in late spring 2022 of a Tripltek all weather tablet. The all weather tablet let me keep track of the order in which plants were listed on the final examination, record attendance, and make notes on changes made in the field. 

The class met at the Learning Resource Center to ensure the students were logged onto the network and the Canvas Student app. Only one student had not logged into the app prior to class. For reasons that were unclear, the Canvas Student app on the student's older iPhone would not log into Canvas. The work around was for the student to log into Canvas using Safari on their phone. 

Getting set to go into the field began just after 4:00 PM. 

The final examination consisted of 18 plants in 36 paired questions in an Instructure Canvas Classic Quiz. The test was set to be available at 4:20 PM, this actually worked although in retrospect perhaps a 4:15 PM open would be appropriate. The class remained at the Learning Resource Center until all students had the field final exam in Canvas open and started on their device.

Although the students had been briefed in advance about the need to have a portable device such as a smartphone or tablet, two students showed up with laptops. Laptops with the keyboards are vulnerable in our high humidity forests which tend to drip water even when there is no rain. And light rain during an ethnobotany field walk is almost always a given. 

The final covered a total round trip distance of about two miles on campus. 

4:34 PM

From the Learning Resource Center the class went to the northeast corner of the campus. On the right is Scaevola taccada.

Renvany, Ladricia, Maliza, Megan, Adelina

The field final is essentially run on an honor system. One might be forgiven for thinking the three on the left above are sharing answers, but each is from a different linguistic and cultural heritage and thus have different answers to the questions. 

This area included a number of local plants. The list of plants this term was driven primarily by a flora for Woleai. If a plant is found on Woleai and has a local name there, then the plant is likely to be found on every inhabited island in the Federated States of Micronesia. 

Lycopodiella cernua

There are plants that seem to me to be unlikely to be found on an outer island atoll, yet they have names in Woleaian and Ulithian, gashishil gaatu and pechalgaatuw respectively. Although this might be thought of as a result of the presence of the plant on Yap proper, those names have the same meaning as the name of the plant in Chuuk lagoon, wúnen kattu, cat's tail for the furry look of the plant. I am not aware that the Yapese name, l'law, has any such connotation. The languages of the outer islands are in the Chuukic family, hence the connection back to Chuuk lagoon.

Although convective cells had brought passing heavy rainfall to Palikir throughout the day, the rain held off for the duration of the field final. Although the final began at 4:20 PM, the sun was still intensely hot due in large part to the humidity. The ground was soaking wet, the sun was evaporating this water producing highly saturated air near ground level. The two students with laptops can be seen at photo center.

Heading west across campus.

The patch of Centella asiatica by the Yapese cultural hut could not be located today. The secondary patch at the site of the former PeaceSat dish had only a couple of plants. Finding another patch or intentionally planting this could be necessary. The Chuukese students did not realize that there is a name for this in their language, nikótókót. For Chuukese local names the students were to enter the names without accent marks as obtaining those can be more challenging on a mobile device keyboard. Students from Chuuk, however, knew how to obtain the accent marks on their devices and used them. This required some post hoc manual remarking of the field final exam.

The students had been given a master list of all local plant names as a reference. Orthography is a complex issue in the islands and allowance for localized spelling differences also required post hoc remarking of some answers. 

Continuing to the west, Tommy and Anastacia on lead. Rindy just behind. The route was designed to return to known WiFi range. No one reported issues with connectivity during the walk, an early concern with this design. 

A couple weeks earlier I had reopened a path from the Senna alata to the Coffea robusta. 

Cordyline fruticosa.

Working in the forest. The students understand the intent of the field final examination. If a student can walk through their forest naming the plants and explaining their uses, observers would agree that they know their ethnobotany. And that is the intent of the field final, that someone would say, "Udahn ohlen Pohnpei!" or "Udahn lihen Pohnpei!"

Ladricia at the Curcuma longa

Connectivity was a concern with these locations in the forest, but no students reported difficulty entering answers into the quiz. The Canvas Student app seems to be stable in the event of intermittent loss of signal.

Ixora casei

Headed towards the last three plants at 5:19 PM. If anything the paperless approach moved faster across campus than the paper based version. The online test also eliminated the post walk rewrite. In the past the class arrived at the last plant with wet paper and illegible writing. The class then usually sat down to rewrite their final on a fresh sheet of paper. There were potential issues with this approach. The rewrite was out in the field and provided a potential opportunity for students to share a missed answer. 

5:35 PM

The class was advised to ensure they were securely on WiFi before submitting, all were able to submit the field final without any apparent difficulty. All submissions came in, including those submitted immediately from the final field location. 

Student performance on the field final examination was excellent. By any metric, the paperless field final examination on mobile devices using Instructure Canvas was a resounding success.