Utilizing On-Line Instructional Technologies to Enhance Learning in Soil and Environmental Sciences.

Since the late 1970’s, when students in the Introductory Soil Science course at Purdue University first began to use personal computers, technology and a team approach to instruction by the faculty (McFee et al., 1980) have played major roles in helping students learn about soil science.  Today, students conduct their weekly lessons in a Soils Resource Center equipped with Internet-based lessons and surrounded with a multitude of displays and experiments directly related to each unit’s instructional objectives.  In addition to the many opportunities for collaborative, active learning in the Soils Resource Center, students in the soil science courses have a new web-based tool to help them learn about soils and landscapes from anywhere they have an Internet connection.   This new web tool is called Isee - Integrating spatial educational experiences into soil, crop, and environmental sciences and it was developed here at Purdue. Many of the concepts that our students must master are inherently spatial, but our ability to make these spatial patterns clear to our students has been limited. Students, however, need more geospatial skills to understand and address the increasingly complex societal problems that will confront them throughout their careers. We along with our colleagues have developed a web-based geographic information system based on Google Earth that will allow students to access a large variety of soil and other maps for any area of the state of Indiana and we are working to expand it capabilities to other regions of the Midwest.   We have two goals: (1) to develop the ability of our students to use geospatial information to understand how and why soils and landscapes vary spatially at scales ranging from individual fields to a region as large as Indiana, and (2) to develop our students’ understanding as to how the spatial distribution of soils and landscapes impacts the distributions of crops, cropping systems, land use, and environmental and natural resource issues. The Isee web site can be accessed at http://isee.purdue.edu/.  In addition, to the Soils Resource Center and its web-based resources described above, we have been successfully using Adobe Connect® to allow students to access their instructors via the Internet to seek help with homework and/or prepare for exams.  The use of Adobe Connect® makes the instructor available to the students from home (or anywhere) at a point in time when the students are most interested in learning – usually late at night before the homework is due or before an exam.  Regular face-to-face help sessions and tutoring sessions are still offered but many students have schedules that do not permit them to come to these sessions.  Late at night, on weekends, or at anytime convenient to the students, the instructor can use Adobe Connect® from a location of choice.  The interactive sessions may be recorded and made available via the Web to students who cannot attend the face-to-face help sessions or the synchronous Adobe Connect® sessions.  This access to the recorded “meetings” allows all students to learn from the instructor’s and the other students’ comments at a time and place of their choosing.