Since its inception in October 1999, the Plant and Soil Sciences e-Library project, a learning object repository collaboration, has grown to include 121 lessons (8 in Spanish) and 117 animations (24 in Spanish). These numbers continue to rise and include topic areas in soil science, weed science, plant physiology, plant genetics, horticulture science and turf science. A growing team of 28 content authors from 10 US and International academic institutions and other partners contribute peer-reviewed content to the e-Library. It has an international user audience, receiving over 12.65 million hits from 556,784 unique visits in the past 12 months alone. As part of our long-term goal to strengthen science education and increase the national effectiveness and science learning impacts of the Plant and Soil Sciences e-Library, we are developing an online community of learning environment (Web 2.0) for teachers/students to supplement the well established repository nature of the program. We envision that such a community resource will efficiently meet a broad range of national academic learning needs and/or outcomes. Our vision long-term is to foster a partnership between this particular e-community in the Plant and Soil Sciences eLibrary and professional societies, whose members have life science education missions.
What exactly is this e-community of Plant and Soil Teachers? It will be an online community of shared resources where teachers exchange ideas, post and access teaching activities, share teaching tips; engage in dialog on effective teaching pedagogy for our discipline and much more. The strength of this community will really depends upon committed teachers willing to share ideas and develop innovative ideas for our teaching community.