One goal of an agronomy laboratory course is to provide students the opportunity to apply basic information to practical settings. This goal is usually met by a combination of lecture and hands-on exercises, although students usually retain information more effectively through active learning. The objective of this study was to promote participation, improve understanding, and increase retention of subject matter by students, through the use of an applied laboratory exercise. The lab exercise topic used in this study was precision farming, a topic unfamiliar to most students. To evaluate student retention, they were given a pre-test to assess prior knowledge, a post-test one week after the exercise, and a post-test five weeks after the exercise. Pre-test questions were randomized multiple choice and questions were re-randomized for post-tests. Statistical analysis (ANOVA) of preliminary results revealed a significant difference between pre- and post-test mean scores (5.0 and 7.1, respectively), indicating that there was an overall increase in student knowledge of this subject. There was no difference between the one-week and five-week post test mean scores (7.0 and 7.2, respectively), indicating that the information was retained over the five week period. Data on retention over a 4 month period will be presented.