Submitting Assignments

All assignments are to be submitted in the laulima drop box on the due date by 11:59 pm. Group assignments only need to be submitted by one group member. Oral presentations are submitted as PowerPoints. All file names should start with your last name or team name, followed by the assignment type and number. For example:
    Name Journal 1
    Team Name Project part 1 Draft
All materials, including drafts, should remain in the drop box until the end of the semester.

Students at this level are expected to submit professional quality work. Written material that is difficult to read and/or understand is not accepted for grading, and a score of zero is entered for that assignment. This may occur because of poor structure and/or grammar, or other reasons. This policy protects against having to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to decipher one assignment, so that instructor time can be fairly divided among all the student assignments.

Swine Production Written Project

This is a group project, so only one report per group is required. The project involves the description and in-depth analysis of a local commercial pig farm. Include descriptions of how the farm operates, reasons why the farm is operated this way, comparisons to other farms, and suggestions for the farmer. Written projects are due on the Monday following the oral presentation of each section. The project is first submitted as a draft. All students are expected to contribute equally to the development and writing of the project. The instructor will provide feedback on the draft to help the group submit a high quality final written assignment. Feedback may be provided as written and oral comments, class discussion, examples, and a group editing exercise.

The report should be long enough (36 or more pages including tables and figures) to clearly describe and analyze the farm, but should avoid wordiness, repetition and fluff. The report should be carefully prepared, well written and well organized and use correct English. The report must be typewritten and double-spaced.

Team evaluations

Each group member will evaluate themselves and other group members on contributions to the group project, including team work, dependability, communication and collegiality. Team evaluations are due on the last day of class.

Weekly journals

Each student will submit a weekly journal of no more than one page. The first half of the journal should be a summary of the week’s activities and progress, and the second half should be a personal reflection on strengths and challenges. Suggestions for improvement are welcome. Journals are due every Wednesday. Journals are not submitted first as drafts, but students should use instructor feedback on earlier journals to improve the quality of later work.

Farmer interviews

The farmers will provide feedback and a grade for each students on effectiveness of on farm engagement. The feedback will be provided to the students through the instructor. Expectations will be discussed in class.

Oral Presentations

Each team will have six oral presentations, which will provide an overview of the team’s farm for each of the six sections in the written project:
1. Introduction: name, farm site, goals and size of farm
2. Breeding plan
3. Feeding plan
4. Housing and waste management
5. Health plan and animal welfare                    
6. Income, expenses, labor and farm profitability

The oral reports will provide an opportunity to practice oral skills, including the abilities to concisely and accurately summarize a project report and to effectively and clearly communicate to the audience. Be prepared to discuss and answer questions on your presentation. The goals of the oral presentations and discussion are to:
1. Identify and describe the key findings in each section of the project
2. Effectively communicate with the audience
3. Identify areas that are not clear to the audience and improve descriptions in the written project
4. Compare and contrast management practices among the participating farms.
                                                
The presentations will be on Wednesday of the weeks indicated in the class schedule. Each team will present a 12 minute (4 minutes for each team member) overview using PowerPoint, followed by 3 minutes for questions and discussion.

Organization
Each presentation should have clear theme. Start with an introduction providing an overview of farm practices, describe key areas and their importance with appropriate supporting material, and tie the presentation together with a conclusion. Each presenter should refer to the theme. As an example, the first presenter might introduce the goals of the feeding program and describe the feeding of young pigs, the second presenter might move on to the feeding of growing and finishing pigs, and the third presenter might describe the feeding of sows and boars and conclude with the strengths and challenges of the feeding program. Coordination and team work are important to an effective presentation.

Delivery
Delivery of the content is very important for effective communication. Practice with your team members before presenting to the class.
1. Stress key points
2. Maintain eye contact
3. Speak to the entire audience, not just to one or two people or to the professors
4. Use meaningful gestures
5. Use notes sparingly; do not read from notes or from slides
6. Use standard grammar
7. Speak clearly

Visuals
The slides are NOT the presentation; they support the presentation. Use approximately one Power Point slide per minute. Slides should contain figures, summary tables, or key words (maximum 25 words per slide). They should be simple enough that they can be read very quickly so that the audience can concentrate on listening to you. Slides should be:
1. Used appropriately to reinforce and support the main points
2. Easily viewed by the entire audience
3. Free of spelling and grammatical errors
4. Not distracting to the audience
                                    
Oral presentations and effective use of PowerPoint will be discussed in class. The instructor will provide feedback and a grade on both content and presentation using the rubric provided. The feedback will be provided to individuals on presentation skills and to groups on content.

Discussion

Oral presentations will be followed by class discussion to compare the farms and the reasons why they operate as they do. Each student is expected to both lead and participate in discussions. Use this time to draw relationships between concepts/principles and what is seen in the field, for planning and for problem-solving. Attendance, being on time and participation are mandatory. Ideas from the discussions should be used to improve the written project reports.

We will start with a class discussion of expectations. The instructor will provide individual feedback and grades using a checklist.

Final exam

The final exam will consist of at least two questions: a summary of the strengths or positives of pig production in Hawaii, and a summary of the challenges faced by local pig producers.