| Product Name: |
Oz Soils - An Interactive Introduction to Soil Science |
| Level: |
First Year Tertiary / Second Year Tertiary |
| Platform: |
Macintosh® / PC - Windows® |
| Supplied Information: |
Oz Soils is an interactive multimedia computer program designed to teach the core concepts and processes of soil science. A basic knowledge of soils is now a requirement in many professions. Oz Soils will be useful to students in disciplines such as agriculture, natural resources, ecology, geography, geology and engineering.
Program topics:
Nutrient Cycling: transformations, inputs and outputs of nutrients in the soil and in relation to plants and animals.
The Hydrological Cycle: phase relations, infiltration, soil water movement, salinisation, and erosion.
Soil Structure: hierarchy of structure, aggregation, texture, soil strength, and tillage.
Soils and the Landscape: soil formation, morphology, classification, and Australian soils. |
| Possible Use: |
This product is suitable for First Year Tertiary / Second Year Tertiary courses. |
| Price: |
$60.00 single copy $250.00 10 copies |
| Developer/s: |
University of New England, Heiko Daniel and Peter Lockwood |
| Review: |
Oz Soils is an excellent teaching tool for courses involving the study of Australian soils. It is written from the viewpoint of agricultural science but the topics are so clearly presented that my students from geology/geography/environmental science backgrounds enjoyed working through it. The programme has four modules - nutrient cycling, hydrological cycle, soil structure and soils & the landscape. Within each module, the menu allows students to choose from a set of topics, and presents usually a short introductory section of text followed by explanation of soil processes illustrated by photographs, diagrams or animated graphics. At the end of each module, a series of revision questions in multiple choice format are given. As the students do these, the number of attempts as well as details of the correct answers are shown - there can be quite noisy competition in class as a result! Oz Soils includes a glossary of terms and reference list.
The material is self-explanatory but I recommend individual topics as reading material to supplement lectures. Some topics are covered more than once and this is helpful (eg cation exchange on clays is dealt with in the soils & landscape module and also under nutrient cycling). The nutrient cycling module is particularly good for students struggling with concepts such as cation exchange and C:N mineralisation because of their animated graphics. In examples of soils from various areas, both Great Soil Group and Australian Soil Classification terms are used. I integrate the soil structure module with laboratory or field exercises, using Oz Soils to explain the concepts and then having students apply them.
There are a couple of minor flaws in this version - 'sandy loam' and 'sandy clay loam' transposed in the texture triangle; hitting 'play' under the 'particle size theory' topic crashing the program; a diagram showing nett erosion on upper slopes and nett deposition below being oversimplistic. All these are being corrected in the version now being developed.
My students have used the program for two years now and they have enjoyed it and learnt well from it. Those who work systematically through the whole programme know a lot about soils at the end. I recommend it highly.
|
|
Dr Ann Young, School of Geosciences, University of Wollongong |
Other references
to this product: |
EdTech'98 http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/gen/aset/confs/edtech98/pubs/articles/l/lockwood.html; Dr Ian Grieve, Departmental of Environmental Science, University of Stirling, and Christopher Teh Boon Sung, Department of Soil Science, University of Reading, CTI Clues Newsletter No 24, March 1999; An Application of Interactive Multimedia to Improve the Learning Environments for Tertiary Science Students by Heiko Daniel and Peter Lockwood in Supplement to Proceedings, Program and Snapshots, ASCILITE 99 |
| |
| Supplier: |
Distance Education Centre
"Oz Soils Orders"
University of New England
Armidale NSW 2351 |
|
tlc@metz.une.edu |
|
http://www.une.edu.au/agronomy/ozsoilscd.html |
|
fax: (067) 73 3269 |
| Date Record Last Modified: |
21/12/99 |
