Web Soil Survey lesson plans and instructor guide: Developing learning tools for undergraduate soil science classes

Abstract

<p>Teaching soil science can often be a challenging endeavor. It can be difficult to teach about a resource that can’t always be seen. One of the most powerful tools that can be used to help teach soil science to undergraduate students is Web Soil Survey offered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. This proposal presents an instructor’s user guide for utilizing Web Soil Survey as a teaching aide in undergraduate soil science classes. The user guide consists of three parts. The first is an instructor user guide to be given by the instructor prior to lessons one and two. Lesson 1 is a group lesson where students use the instructor guide as a reference to collaborate and understand the basics of Web Soil Survey. Finally, lesson two is an individual assignment where students take the lessons they learned from the previous two lessons and incorporate them into a real-world scenario where they must act as a realtor and try to sell a piece of land of their choice to one of three clients. The goal of this user guide is to assist undergraduate soil science instructors by providing them with a user guide on how to supplement their teaching of soil science using Web Soil Survey.</p>