SoilExplore: ETHZ’s shared interactive platform for soil education

Soils are the backbone of terrestrial ecosystems and crucial in carbon storage, aiding the fight against climate change. However, soil fertility and its capacity to store carbon vary globally, influenced significantly by human activities. Therefore, instilling an understanding of our impact on global soil resources is essential for students studying at ETHZ in soil-related subjects across departments (D-USYS, D-ERDW, D-BAUG, D-ARCH).

While it is impractical to travel worldwide to showcase soil diversity, relying solely on textbooks limits students› comprehension of the vast soil variations. A richer understanding requires hands-on experience that cannot be acquired from textbooks. Our innovative approach involves a newly created soil profile collection containing real-world soil profile exhibits, from which wewill create engaging and interactive educational media tailored for diverse audiences – from undergraduate and postgraduate courses to the general public and school excursions.

Introducing SoilExplore: an interactive online platform hosting materials from this collection, serving both lecturers and students. It aims to fortify students› foundational knowledge in soil science and offer profound insights into global soil challenges. Focused topics are, the globally varying functions provided by soils for ecosystems, the role of soils for climate mitigation, the role of agricultural land use for soil degradation and restoration options.

– Structuring accompanying documentation of the soil profile collection for educational purposes. The available scientific documentation of the soil profile collection will be reformatted and used as the fundament for describing the framework of SoilExplore (geo-climatic and socio-economic context), the features (soil physico-chemical properties), and the functions (land use) of the displayed soil profiles in a way suitable at varying educational levels. It forms the basis and includes didactical material to support lecturers in developing their own teaching material.

– Conceptualizing and creating the online modular platform of SoilExplore hosting the educational content. The accompanying online platform will contain two modules organized under the three concepts – framework, features, functions. Each module will be integrated to one or several courses through Moodle.

– Design and implementation of developed modules. Module 1 is an interface linked to the physical soil exhibit and visualizing the soil features thanks to static and interactive illustrations. It will be used to develop a self-paced learning module teaching students how to name a soil profile based on a classification system. The targeted interactivity of the illustrations will entail a specially designed User interface and User experience design UI/UX design providing a more nuanced, detailed and self-driven learning experience. The students can individually choose different layers of the soil and analyze them step by step. Module 2 will consist of videos that explain soil functions and be part of a Moodle exercise, tested in an elective BSc course.

– Coordinating a series of workshops involving ETHZ lecturers. The workshops will aim to inform on the educational potential of the soil collection, prioritize the development of the educational content, and support its implementation in the lectures of interested lecturers.

For the students:
The intended educational material provides the students with a connected physical and interactive learning tool, fostering a better understanding of theoretical concepts of soil diversity and soil functions. Students can gain hands-on experience on soil profiles from different geo-climatic regions of the world that would otherwise be inaccessible. E-learning modules enable the students to study in autonomy at their own pace, while in-person lectures can focus on putting the theoretical concepts into practice.

For the faculty:
Having shared ETHZ-wide educational material with respect to soil diversity will foster interactions among lecturers and better connect courses that relate to soil education. It can thus be a tool that helps rethink the coherence of and co-develop the curriculum of the involved study programmes which often touch or require certain understandings of soil functions without focusing on the context in which soils are situated and used by people. Very few universities have similar comprehensive collections of soil exhibits available as the one planned. Such unique teaching material using innovative media contributes to the excellence of ETHZ. Beyond higher-education teaching, the location of the soil profile collection (focusTerra) allows for the co-development of outreach towards high-school students and their teachers. We thus hope that SoilExplore will support a sustainable influx of students to the (soil-related) degree programmes on the long run, showcase the direct link between the relevance of soil research and education performed at ETHZ and supports ETHZ’s strategic goals of engaging the public in a dialogue on its research.