Engaging students in active learning by encouraging them to interact with their instructors, their peers, and the material can improve student learning outcomes.  While a number of studies have examined the integration of active learning strategies into lectures, these have primarily been in physics, chemistry, and biology. We studied student performance in a soil science course before and after transition from a traditional lecture/lab structure to a ‘studio’ environment.  In the studio course, lectures were minimized and integrated with collaborative group activities, lab work, and field days.  Fail rate and average grades (quizzes, exams, research reports, final grades) were calculated before and after transition.  In addition to testing for differences due to course structure, we also included gender, class rank, and GPA in our analysis.  In the second studio year, 21 students (12 women, 9 men) were interviewed to gain a better understanding of students’ perspectives on the studio structure as a learning environment.

Studio students consistently outperformed lecture/lab students across all assessment types; in addition, no studio students failed the studio course (compared to 3% in the lecture/lab), and the percentage of students whose final grade was lower than a C dropped from 17% (lecture/lab) to 3.5% (studio).  Regardless of course structure, female students outperformed male students, sophomores outperformed upperclassmen, and GPA was a significant predictor of final grade.  While students had mixed feelings about the proportion of lectures to group work, most interviewed students found the studio structure beneficial as a learning environment because they experienced more field and lab work, exchanged more ideas with their peers, and attended ‘lecture’ and ‘lab’ in the same class session (and thus could more readily make connections between the two).  Overall, our findings suggest that the studio structure is an effective learning environment for an introductory soil science course.