A Digital Introductory Soils Course for the Virtual Classroom.

We developed a digital Introductory Soils course for use by students around the world taking classes through Penn State’s World Campus. We incorporated a collection of 30 lessons including online modules, slide presentations, videos, field exercises, lab reports, and readings produced by 14 authors. The presentations provided the students with an exhaustive survey of  the fundamental principles of soil science and its applications.  The course has been implemented to sections of 20-25 traditional and continuing educational students for two 12 week summer sessions and 4 times for the 15 week semester under three different instructors.  The production and implementation of this online course has proven to be a cost effective and educationally sound method for providing an Introductory Soils course to a geographically and demographically diverse audience.  Our vision for the course will be to provide access  to an increasing audience and a broader range of disciplines. Online demonstrations of the course will be provided.