Reusable learning units for Plant nutrition

The processes by which plants take up nutrition underpin the understanding of agricultural ecosystems in various Master’s degree courses of System-oriented Natural Sciences. In this project the course content relevant to external Master’s degree students will be presented in the form of independent study modules and deposited in the Learning Content Management System docendo. The project may be based on preliminary Mobility Matters work.

• Versatility at different levels: Bachelor students use the learning material in addition to the lecture, Graduate students use the learning material for revising basic knowledge
• Consistent use of visualizations (e.g., interactive figures)
• Providing the learning material in English increases the number of users (english speaking graduate students)

The learning material was created and stored in the web-based learning content management system Docendo (provided by the ETH Educational Development and Technology unit), which is central repository that allows for an efficient creation, retrieval, re-use and collaborative authoring process of learning material.

Possible improvements could be made regarding e.g., (1) the addition of study questions to the text, (2) the choice of the statical figures and (3) the increase of available quiz questions with instant feedback.

From the learning material students appreciate especially the interactive figures that provide step-by-step explanations for complex topics. Also very popular are the multiple-choice quizzes, that provide a short feedback text for correct and wrong answers.

• Try Docendo for creating and archiving learning material.
• If feasible, use interactive instead of or in addition to statical visualizations.
• Provide the access to your online learning material without password restrictions.