Annual Report: 2013

I submit herewith the annual reports from the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, for the period ending December 31, 2013. This is done in accordance with an act of Congress, approved March 2, 1887, entitled, “An act to establish agricultural experiment stations, in connection with the agricultural college established in the several states under the provisions of an act approved July 2, 1862, and under the acts supplementary thereto,” and also of the act of the Alaska Territorial Legislature, approved March 12, 1935, accepting the provisions of the act of Congress. The research reports are organized according to our strategic plan and by broad subject, focusing on geography, high-latitude agriculture, forest sciences, and the interaction of humans and the environment. Research conducted by our graduate and undergraduate students plays an important role in these grants and the impact they make on Alaska.Financial Statement -- Funding & Grants -- Students -- Research at SNRAS & AFES -- Publications -- Facult

Developing Ecological Habits of Mind

This paper describes a two-part study. The first part of the study documents the experiences of nine school-based artists who took part in a six-day professional development workshop on ecology and the arts at an off-grid wilderness facility. The course was designed to increase artist-educators’ awareness of issues surrounding energy use and consumption as well as to provide them with direction for approaching these topics through arts-based learning in schools. One of the sessions introduced an electronic portfolio as a tool for supporting arts-based learning on topics dealing with ecology and the environment. Data were collected from the artist-educators through observations, field notes, and semi-standardized interviews. Participants also completed an on-line survey regarding various energy conservation and consumption issues. The data for the first part of the study revealed how the artist-educators anticipated interacting with teachers and students upon returning to their local schools, both in terms of content related to energy conservation and in the ways that they would approach this topic through their respective art forms. In the second part of the study, the electronic portfolio was used to promote self-regulated learning with Grade 5 students in a public elementary school in Toronto, Ontario while they studied energy and ecology through an arts-based approach to these topics. Students worked with one of the participants who took part in the six-day professional development workshop. Together with their teacher, they explored solar power and wind turbine energy and presented their learning through dance. As for the first part of the study, classroom-based data were comprised of observations, field notes, and interviews. In addition, a pre- and post-questionnaire was used to ascertain the degree of self-regulatory practices used by the students. Students expressed considerable enthusiasm for the tool and demonstrated significant growth in understanding how to set goals and critique the work of their peers

The impact of novel people, places, and activities, in tourism

As part of an undergraduate research design class, we measured tourism experiences of 617tourists, during a day, and their potential impact, in a quantitative, cross-sectional manner. In May2023, a total of 30 tourism and experience design students teamed up from Breda University ofApplied Sciences, Netherlands, and Brigham Young University students, United States, andapproached tourists at 45 various tourist hot spots in the Rotterdam and the Amsterdam are

City innovation as resonance: : the case of outdoor offices and conferences in the open air museum

This paper explores an innovation case within a “smart” Swedish mid-sized city that works extensively with digitalization.Over a long period in time, city populations and city tourism have increased, while more urgentchallenges connected to sustainability have emerged along with health-related problems. In parallel the already established and ongoing digitalization of society was fortified in the pandemic period, something that may have changed the tourism industry. Today, manyprofessional meetings happen both on- and offline.One challenge for public officials who manage urban space, is a societal expectation to maximize and improve tax payers ́ life quality on limited budgets and resources that are commonly owned.This is one of the reasons to why contemporary urban planners and city tourism development organizations need to find new solutions in response to problems related to local and global change. I will focus on norm- changes related to digital nomadism (Makimoto & Manners, 1997) and in connection with a movement for outdoor office work (www. outdoorofficeday.nl,Petersson et al., 2021). The city culture department is testing to offer outdoor offices and meetings in an urban public open air museum, a place that is used for leisure and for pedagogicpurposes.These new offerings can be conceptualized as innovative value propositions (Corvellec & Hultman, 2014) because new values, for instance rich nature experiences or a feeling of doingthe right thing, are made available for tourism consumers. These proposed services can be understood as a re-negotiation of socio-cultural values, where the public institution re-frames space in response to external change.In sociologist Hartmut Rosas (2019) words, this constitutes a form of an ongoing dialogue withthe world, in resonance. Based on eight qualitative interviews with local managers, participant observations, online communication and documents, I explore innovation from this sociologicalperspective.The aim of this research project is to understand tourism innovation discursive practices in public management, as responses to local and global change. Three research questions guide the study; How are outdoor offices and conferences constructed as value propositions for potential visitors? To which problems/risks do these value propositions respond? With what terms are outdoor offices constructed as answers to problems?So far, it was found that some of the strategic actions taken by the project leader was to launchthe outdoor office through a local innovation program, and to frequently work with professionalsocial media platforms.ReferencesCorvellec, & Hultman. (2014). Managing the politics of value propositions. MarketingTheory, 1470593114523445.Makimoto, T., & Manners, D. (1997). Digital nomad: Wiley.Petersson, T., C., Lisberg, J., E., Stenfors, C., Bodin, D., C., Hoff, E., Mårtensson, F., & Toivanen, S. (2021). Outdoor Office Work – AnInteractive Research Project Showingthe Way Out. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.636091 Rosa, H. (2019). Resonance : a sociology of the relationship to the world: Polity Press.https://www.outdoorofficeday.n

Commodification of recreational hunting in Sweden : hunting tourism experiences as ‘peculiar goods’

The paper is based on a study of hunting tourism enterprising in Sweden. The study examines how hunting tourism businesses in Sweden navigate in a complex social, economic and moral environment. The aim of the present paper is to identify how tensions between a market- oriented value sphere and a value sphere based on friendship- and community reciprocity are played out in hunting tourism entrepreneurship. In particular, the study focuses on the ambiguous character of the hunting experience product and the different narratives and discourses framing what is considered, by the actors themselves, to be a ‘good’ hunting tourism experience

Hearing the student voice : promoting and encouraging the effective use of the student voice to enhance professional development in learning, teaching and assessment within higher education

This is an ESCalate development project led by Fiona Campbell of Napier University that was completed in 2007. The Hearing the Student Voice project aimed to promote and encourage the use of the student voice to enhance the effectiveness of academic professional development and ultimately the learning experience of students. Students can have a powerful impact on academic professional development aimed at enhancing learning, teaching and assessment practice. By providing qualitative insights about the nature of their learning experience, students can bring both valid and valuable viewpoints and motivate staff who are engaged by the students' perspective and often admire their perspicacity. This report records the progress and achievements of the Hearing the Student Voice project, funded by ESCalate to promote and encourage the use of the student voice to enhance the effectiveness of academic professional development in learning, teaching and assessment practice and ultimately the learning experience of students. The report has been written by the team representing the four universities who collaborated on the projec

Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles

Interpreting Dreams: Directing an Immersive Adaptation of Strindberg\u27s A Dream Play

This written portion of my thesis documents how I, as director, conceptualized, devised and staged an immersive adaptation of August Strindberg’s A Dream Play, with the support of a large team of collaborators including: assistant directors, dramaturgs, designers, stage managers, and actors. In this document I attempt to synthesize the discoveries I made in this process regarding the challenges and experience of directing immersive theater, including the importance of giving up directorial control and relying on my collaborators as partners in the creation of the production. I begin with an introduction to the research I conducted into the field of immersive theater as well as my research on the work of August Strindberg, with a specific emphasis on the themes and context of A Dream Play. I then describe how I led my creative team through the process of designing a devised immersive theater production by encouraging open communication and fostering an atmosphere of trust. I also discuss the casting process and my efforts to establish an autonomous ensemble by allowing the actors to choose their own parts, write their own scripts, and devise their own scenes. I reflect on how I navigated the unpredictable nature of immersive theater, through a careful balance between detailed planning and free exploration, all the while embracing the possibility of failure as an expected part of the process. Finally, I attempt to assess the success of the production through examination of the impact it had on its audiences based on my own personal observations, as well as feedback collected through formal methods of survey