Blending Multimedia and Face-to-Face Teaching to Enhance Learning about the Forest Floor

Abstract

Core Ideas Forest floor is essential to forest ecosystems, but classification is difficult. Multimedia and face‐to‐face learning can teach visual tasks like soil classification. Students identified repeated visualizations and collaboration as important. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods of assessment gives deeper insights. The forest floor is essential to functional, healthy forests. It is important for forestry professionals to understand, describe, and classify forest floors. We developed a Forest Floor educational resource, blending web‐based multimedia and face‐to‐face teaching. The objectives of this study were to (1) develop blended‐learning activities to teach forest floor description and classification and (2) assess student perceptions of the blended‐learning method using exploratory factor analysis and group interviews. We used a Likert scale survey instrument to assess student perceptions of their learning, and investigated underlying factors through exploratory factor analysis of survey results and the manifestation of factors in focus group interviews. Five implicit factors were interpreted: (1) satisfaction with the Forest Floor resource as a learning enhancement; (2) response to presentation of concepts using a blended learning method; (3) student self‐assessment of learning; (4) student learning preferences in accessing materials; and (5) website usability. Ninety‐four percent of students agreed or strongly agreed that the Forest Floor resource was helpful for learning forest floor concepts, 79% that describing samples in class was essential for understanding the properties of organic horizons, and 81% that they were able to relate information in the Forest Floor resource to samples used in a face‐to face activity, demonstrating that students tended to prefer learning information from videos and in collaboration with other students, and felt positive about their knowledge of the new material.

Supplementing forestry field instruction with video and online dynamic quizzing

“…This same app was used to teach soil science students about the forest floor (Krzic, Wilson, & Hoffman, 2018). This soil science course also successfully used a variety of online resources such as videos, animations, and study guides to supplement lecture and laboratory (Hoffman, Krzic, Nashon, & Schmidt, 2017; Krzic et al., 2018).…”

Introductory soil courses: a frontier of soil science education in Canada

“…Even though numerous topics covered in the introductory soil science courses are suitable for hands-on teaching methods such as field descriptions of soil properties such as texture, structure, color, rooting depth, there are also numerous opportunities to enhance an experiential learning experience in soil science through blending of in-person and online teaching approaches. One example is the use of mobilebased games to allow students to go on self-guided fields tours (Hoffman et al 2017). Another is the incorporation of emerging media such as augmented reality to illustrate changes of soil types across landscapes thorough hands-on displays that allow learners to create topography models by shaping sand that is augmented in realtime by colored elevation maps, topographic contour lines, and simulated water (Vaughan et al 2017).…”

COVID‐19 field instruction: Bringing the forests of British Columbia to students 8,000 km away

“…With limited time, I first sought existing materials for use in the course. I used a website and video series (Hoffman, Krzic, Nashon, & Schmidt, 2017;Krzic et al, 2018) to give students the appropriate background in forest soils. I also re-used a subset of videos on plant identification and ecological characteristics that I had produced previously (Culbert, 2020).…”