Soils Laboratory Manual: An Open-Source Educational Resource for Introductory Soil Science Laboratory Instruction.

The continued rise in cost for textbooks has become a serious constraint to affordable higher education. One solution to this problem is the development and adoption of open textbooks that are freely available to students online or in print. The goal of the Open Soil Science Laboratory Manual Project is to develop a community-driven project in which instructors of soil science courses can develop laboratory manuals catered to the needs of their particular course based on materials already developed and implemented at Kansas State University and North Carolina State University. Through a Creative Commons license, instructors can modify the lab manual and related assignments to be more relevant to their respective courses and teaching styles. In return, they are asked to submit their modified version of the lab manual to the community for other instructors to use, thus building a collection of “field-tested” lab lessons and activities. An overview of content in the foundational version of the lab manual will be presented. In addition, survey data from 213 student users of the lab manual from Kansas State University will be used to describe student preferences on topics such as textbook format, types of laboratory activities, and methods of accessing eBooks. Methods for instructors to access the lab manual and to submit modified versions will also be described.