Shovels and Laptops: The Success of Hands-On Labs in Online Soils 101 at Penn State's World Campus.

Our Online Introductory Soils course includes five hands-on laboratory components: Profile Description; Soil Sampling; Infiltration and Percolation; Fertility; Taxonomy, Mapping, and Interpretation.  Students work independently to complete the labs, and routinely give the labs positive evaluations.  Students have consistently demonstrated the initiative and ability to successfully complete and learn from these solo activities as demonstrated by the quality of their laboratory reports.  Rubrics are used to ensure the consistent and efficient evaluation of large numbers of submitted lab reports. The course has been developed and offered at Penn State for eight semesters.