Course:APBI200/Review and Reflect

From UBC Wiki

Quiz Sections

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

Although the SoilWeb200 e-texbook serves as a helpful alternative method for learning the course information, the quiz sections could be modified to improve this resource for student’s learning. I think that the quiz sections of the e-text could be modified to better aid students in learning the course material. More specifically, if the quizzes could display some sort of a total score at the end to show which questions students answered correctly in each quiz. This in place of showing the correct answer for one question each time would be more practical because students could then view how they did overall. Also, I think students would benefit greatly if the quizzes had a better way to navigate through the quiz questions. Instead of having to click ‘next’ or ‘previous’ each time for some quizzes that have more than 50 questions. This makes it more difficult for students to assess how they performed on the quizzes. However, I find the navigation process for the e-text itself very smooth. The information is laid out in a simple manner and it makes finding topics easy and convenient. In addition, the images are useful and the textboxes of information are organized in an effectual way. I am extremely grateful that we have this resource available to us to ensure our success in this course.



Review and reflect of Soil Web 200

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

Overall, the Soil Web 200 provides students with easily-accessible online study material. It has clear-structured course modules and sufficient quizzes, which is very helpful for students to do self-study. For further improvement, I would suggest to only show the correct answers after the student finishes answering all the questions (it is not necessarily be all the questions of the quiz because students might only want to do some of them). Checking the answer right after answering each question would significantly distract the student’s attention and therefore, they are not able to finish the quiz under “exam condition”. Also, I would suggest summarizing the questions and the relevant knowledge this student got wrong at the end of the quiz. It would be extremely helpful for student to self-reflect and target at specific points when reviewing, and therefore to achieve productive study.



Reviewing of soilweb section on Soil Water & Soil Air Interactions Alina Zeng 93411866

In this section, macropores and micropores are well-defined. The examples listed are clear and enhancing understanding, and it is great that movement of air and water is talked about in relation to the pore sizes. To improve, I think it would be even better if hydraulic conductivity could be included in this section, so that students could more easily understand why water moves slower through smaller pores. In the following “effect of water on thermal properties” section, where properties including thermal conductivity, soil heat capacity, thermal admittance, and thermal diffusivity are present and discussed in charts, I feel like it would be better if the units of the aforementioned properties could be explained to help with understanding, since many students do not have a strong background in physics. Also, personally, I do not find the graphs useful but rather, seeing them as confusing. I mean, of course lines representing organic layer would lie beneath mineral layer ones, as there is more air in organic layer, bringing both heat capacity and thermal conductivity down, but how are the graphs helping students with the concepts? Only modest effectiveness is shown and additionality (the difference made by having those graphs) is low. In general, I feel like the e-textbook may convey information better if important words (eg: terms, formulas, things to pay attention to, etc.) are color-coded, bolded or highlighted (but I do understand the fixing process may be time-consuming).



SoilWeb 200 Reflection

The SoilWeb 200 materials are overall an effective source that helps when reviewing or clarifying different topics. The quizzes are great when studying and helping to improve understanding. The detailed answers are helpful and informative. One unit that would be helpful to elaborate on would be a small section on buffering capacity. Another topic that could be more detailed could be the Soil Organic Matter unit. The components of soil organic matter could be included, specifically the non-humic substances and their characteristics and the humic substances and their characteristics. Fulvic acid, Humic acid, and Humin could also be covered more extensively on their traits and what they do. Soil organic matter importance would also be useful to include to help further understand how soil organic matter and other soil properties relate to one another. Since Soil Organic Matter was covered in class several times it might be beneficial for students to be able to review the material in soil web, since the current section only briefly mentions organic matter and mostly discusses decomposition.

Soil Meme Corporate Microbes



Kristi Ellerbroek 58306267

Question 1

I found SoilWeb200 to be a very useful resource when studying for exams as it gives a great summary of each topic as well as providing some specific examples. In particular, the soil components topic is very well organized and helps the readers understand the different components. There are a lot of formulas in the soil components topic (mineral, organic, water, air) such as bulk density, particle density, soil porosity, Darcy’s law, soil water content, and etc. It would be very convenient for users if there is a page with all the formulas on it, so students can perform lab calculations quickly using the page, as well have an easier time memorizing all the formulas. Furthermore, the quiz provided on SoilWeb200 was convenient to study for exams, but I think it can be improved if it displays the overall score of the quiz when completed. I also found it cumbersome to navigate through questions that are from topics not tested on the upcoming exam. For example, both the mineral and organic components are mixed into the SoilWeb200 soil components quiz, but mineral (midterm 1) and organic (midterm 2) components are tested in different midterms. Nonetheless, SoilWeb200 is a great study resource for students and can be further improved with more modification. (by Paul Liu, 68077031)



SoilWeb 200, section quiz suggestions

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

The formatting of soil-web 200 e-textbook looks tidy and easy understanding. Each time when I get troubles in solving problem sets or lab questions, I always check the information posted there. However, I remember when I do the short answer questions in section quiz of each unit, I have no space to input my thoughts, and it's kind of strange design that students can only click on the multiple questions but for the short answer questions, the only thing to do is look at the answer instead of typing down the thinking process. My suggestion for this problem is to leave a blank space under the short answer questions and let students to input their words. And only typing the words in the blank space, the answers will appear after clicking on 'Next' button. From my point, this function could reduce the chances that student cheat the answers and pretend they know what the knowledges are. Therefore, students might be aware what are problems by comparing and contrasting their thoughts and standard answers. Another suggestion I want to give is to provide the short answers related topics besides the section quiz. Specifically, sometimes I still cannot get the point after looking through the answers. For strengthen the understanding the knowledge, it's better to provide a more relevant topics which provide a correct direction for students.

Finnley He 91651752



Adding more hyperlinks to soilweb200 pages

1. It may be helpful to have more Wikipedia-esque links within pages which connect to other concepts in the course. For example, in the Soil Acidity subsection of "Interactions Among Soil Components", it may be helpful to link to the section concerning "plant nutrient availability" by turning those words into a link pointing towards the relevant section of the e-text. Or, under "Sources of Soil Acidity", "mineral weathering" could be a link to the relevant section on that topic. This is the page discussed as an example: http://soilweb200.landfood.ubc.ca/interactions-among-soil-components/4-soil-acidity/ . This concept could however be applied to most of the pages on soilweb200. This may help students expand their knowledge of course content through a more organic, interest-driven process wherein concepts can be linked together automatically by the user. I personally advocate for this as I often find myself learning many interesting concepts by following hyperlinks when reading a wikipedia article out of the ease of access to these concepts that a hyperlink provides. - Matthew Bavis



Ways to improve the SoilWeb200 e-textbook

1

The SoilWeb200 e-textbook is very user-friendly. It has lots of useful information, and section quizzes are definitely a highlight. A way to improve the website and allow for maximum understanding and usefulness, I think LFS should consider adding another section as a glossary. While comparing the e-textbook to Wikipedia, I noticed how Wikipedia had each jargon term hyperlinked to a whole new page with more information. A way to help students trying to learn material is if they could click on a word such as ‘hyphae’ and be brought to that word on the site’s glossary as a quick definition. Or, if it were to be simpler, to superscript such words so when one hovers over the superscript with their mouse, a description would appear above without leaving the entire page itself. This suggestion applies to the whole website and not only certain subsections, but an idea for a specific area would be for the management section of the site. I think it would be interesting if for the different type of soil degradation, or soil erosion scenarios that a or multiple real-life case-studies were provided to give more context and lead to a more holistic learning style.

Nina Andrascik 42607317



review and reflect

  • URL:
  • Date: March 28, 2019
  • Authors:

1. There is one important improvement that I think the SoilWeb200 e-textbook should have in order to improve the learning experience. The SoilWeb200 e-textbook should be more closely correlated with the course material covered in APBI 200. Although the e-textbook has comprehensive information about most of the materials covered in the course, there are still many topics that are not included on the e-textbook. For example, the section about nutrient cycles on the SoilWeb200 e-textbook has very limited information. The nutrient cycles are very important concepts for this course. And without additional information about this section, it is very difficult to learn and review for the topic. On the other hand, the SoilWeb200 e-textbook includes part of the material covered in lectures only. The materials covered in the lab of this course is not featured on the SoilWeb200 e-textbook. It would be easier to review for lab materials if the content is featured on the e-textbook. And it would make the SoilWeb200 e-textbook a more useful source for learning the materials in this course. (Allen Li 88599543)



  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

Soil Web 200 provides students with clear and easy to find online learning materials. It has structured learning modules and quizzes in each category, which are very helpful for students to learn on their own. But when students do the quizzes, it have to click next or pervious and answers will come out after each questions. Also some informations that students learned during APBI200 is limited in soilweb200. For improvements,I suggest that the correct answer be shown only after the student has answered all the questions. Also it should let students choose individual questions that they want to do because sometimes students already know some questions. In addition, it can have some midterm questions or overall exam that could cover all the section quizzes and provide marks after student finished. It can be more helpful for studying.

Wendy Liu 45216637



Q1

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

In order to get familiar with the concept that we learned from APBI 200, SoilWeb 200 gives us the opportunity to practice more questions and gives us more information about specific topic such as organic matter, soil acidity, and etc... After using it to review for my midterms, I found out it being useful to me by giving me more detailed information than from the lecture ppt. However, it doesn’t cover all of the topics like heat that we had learned in class .For me, I think it will be great if add some additional related video such as the factors of soil formation and nutrients cycles can help me more easily memorize in mind and build a more complete foundation of this subject.

Erin Lin 54577440



Review and reflect on APBI 200 Question 3

On top of SoilWeb200 and the slides posted onto the APBI 200 wiki, I found a website useful for soil formation, classification and orders. The website is called Soils of Canada. It helped me clarify the differences of soil formation factors and processes and was also an additional tool for the orders and classification. This website does not help with any of the material covered in the first half of the course other than soil formation factors. It is not a comprehensive tool for the whole course, but it helped in the parts that I personally found more confusing and hard to learn. The videos provided in the lecture from UBC were also helpful but did not lay out the information as well. What I liked about this website is that I can easily compare and contrast either the differing soil orders or soil formation process/factor right in a simple format that helped me understand it faster and clearer.



Tateum Cava 53041018: Review and Reflect

Youtube videos serve as a good platform for me to visualize what I am learning. I had trouble differentiating the different soil horizons in the field. In this video, DR. PHIL has an effective method in classifying each horizon. His method is analyzing the soils physical properties first, example being colour change between horizons, and the last step is naming what you think the soil horizon is. He says that naming the horizon last instead of first makes you less bias in deciding what the soil horizon actually is. Online videos are important to me because they teach the same content in a different way that I can sometimes understand better. Video tutorials are also good because I can attentively watch and rewind the video.



Review & Reflect

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

While sometimes useful for catching up on missed lectures, I often times found myself frustrated using SoilWeb200. To begin with, the material is very disorganized, compared to the structure of the lectures. It was very confusing trying to read something ahead of class, as the materials covered could be all over the website. I quickly learned that doing that would just lead to more confusion. Another thing I have a problem with is that it is very vague at times. There isn't much written material about some of the topics. I was told at the beginning of the course that this would be equivalent to a textbook for the course, but was very underwhelmed by what it actually is. Compared to Wikipedia, I would say it's about the same. Wikipedia might be a little less detailed though. I couldn't really find an effective study tool for this course other than Sandra's lecture notes, and even then those can be a bit vague if I don't have the notes for that particular class.



Search Bar for SoilWeb200

One thing I believe would be very helpful for students is to have a search bar on SoilWeb 200 that only pulls up pages from the SoilWeb200 website. The search bar at the moment pulls up random articles that are not at all pertinent to what we are learning. On SoilWeb200 I found it very hard to find the information I was looking for under the headings given. Sometimes the topic I was unsure of did not seem to fit any of them and I would spend 20 minutes trying to find what I needed and then end up realizing the information was not even there. If there was a search bar which only showed SoilWeb200 pages, it could pull up all of the articles with those keywords and save students a lot of time. If not a search bar, then an index would be just as helpful. I think ease of use is really important for a resource. If a site is hard to navigate, it pushes people away from getting the help they need.



Review and Reflect

  • URL: soilweb200.landfood.ubc.ca/soil-classification/4-canadian-system-of-soil-classification/
  • Date: n.a.
  • Authors: n.a.

For the first question I would like to review the soil classification page in SoilWeb200, this page has the soil order classifications and clear identified diagnostic horizon and characteristics of different orders which is helpful for students to take the systematic information of and it emphasized the key point we need to know in this chapter. However, a picture of the orders and the diagnostic horizon of each order could be more helpful for people to memorize the information. For example, the pictures that show in class notes could be added here, therefore the word description gets to connect with the picture while we get confused about the each of them we can see another one and give us a better understanding.



Soil Science

2. I can't say that I never used a Wikipedia article in this course to help me through a problem set or fill in holes where I felt they existed but, they have many downfalls. I also used each section of SoilWeb to help me with studying for midterms. The Wikipedia article and other soil science related ones I have read have a few issues. They are much too complicated and in-depth for our needs usually. SoilWeb is written for this course so it will have just the right amount of information when for each topic. Content-wise, SoilWeb definitely prevails. The Wikipedia article also doesn't go in depth about most of the actual science. It simply has links to other pages for "areas of research" which I suppose is how Wikipedia is set up to work but SoilWeb has what you need to learn when you get to the page. The specific Wikipedia articles for each sub-topic such as potassium cycle or soil compaction are stated in a much less digestible way than the SoilWeb equivalent. The only benefit to the Wikipedia articles is it can be quicker to find what you need or search for it whereas I found myself hunting for content sometimes on SoilWeb or I would end up on a page I had already learned.



Question 3 - Review & Reflect

I found this website helpful because of the neat organization of all the chapters and the flow of the material. It helped me understand the lab and lecture concepts due to the concise and easy-to-comprehend texts and pictures. Although I appreciate the soilweb200 material, I resorted to this site way more because in soilweb200 the material does not have a consistent flow and information on one topic is all over the site under different sections and it does not go in the same flow as lecture materials so the quizzes are only helpful for the final, not the midterms. (by Maryam Saffarzadeh 22100234)



Review and Reflect Question 1

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

The glossary and quizzes provided by SoilWeb200 are very helpful for my learning. The glossary is very comprehensive and detailed where I can always find answers when I have confusion about basic concepts. The quizzes further assist in integrating my knowledge and understanding. One thing I want to point out is that some content in the glossary and quizzes are not covered in class but mixed with class material. It might be better if there is a separate section for extra learning material which enables the students who are interested to easily explore but also saves time for other students in exam preparation. Besides, each section quiz has 40 to 50 questions making it hard for us to review the questions we get wrong. If the section quizzes could be divided into small chapters and have a summary at the end reflecting our performance, the practice might be more effective.



Additional Study Material in Soilweb - Question 1

The soilweb textbook is a quick and easy way to get a refresher of content or receive clarification on a certain topic. Soilweb contains necessary information required for APBI 200 and it provides that information in a well laid out, organized manner. As students, we have a responsibility to memorize this content and prepare it in a way that we can easily remember it and apply it during a midterm or exam setting. Section quizzes are an effective way of gauging the amount of information you have retained from the previous unit, but some people take separate routes when testing their knowledge. If soilweb had some specific “flash card” like program that enabled students to constantly review a subset of important terms, definitions and material, I believe students would jump at the opportunity. This almost seems too luxurious to have premade study material, but it could help engage students and help improve their knowledge on soilweb topics. The addition of an end of unit summary highlighting key topics could benefit students and inclusion of more practice problems aside from the section quizzes could help gage understanding. I largely believe in repetition and exposure to a large array of problem types so you aren’t taken by surprise in an exam situation. Reading over and memorizing content is one thing, but applying your knowledge into a question is a whole new way of testing your understanding.



Review and reflect - Shruti Sridhar

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

The SoilWeb200 is a reliable and user-friendly resource that I have used during this course. I find it useful because I am able to revise key concepts after studying the lecture notes which helps me ensure that I have not missed out anything. Specifically, the glossary is helpful because I have trouble remembering technical words and it provided me with a comprehensive list that I could go through to find a word that I didn't understand. I also didn’t feel the need to use a physical textbook for terms and definitions because of this feature. One thing that I particularly like are the links and videos provided in certain sections, they’re engaging and they facilitate my understanding of related topics. I feel like it would help if such links and videos were in more sections, especially in the sections related to soil chemistry. However, the e-textbook is not very comprehensive and there are certain sections that have very limited or no information at all and the only study material that I use for these topics is the lecture notes. In the future, I also hope that all the information could be organized more effectively as it is quite time consuming to find a particular topic in the e-textbook.

-Shruti Sridhar (69145357)



Soils of Canada - Orders

This was one of my favourite resources that I used during the term, but it's time for some truth bombs! This site needs to be updated so that it is a useful and easy to navigate archive. With almost 200 monolith samples assembled over the past four decades, the restriction of only being able to sort and search through the models by parent material and order alone makes it very limiting. In addition there is no way to preview any details of the monoliths outside of their archival code and name without opening a new window or tab.

I propose that this site would be much more accessible if the archive had more ways to search for monoliths. Since it is a virtual collection of visual items, perhaps using a website layout that is designed as an image gallery? That way searches would pull up the images of the monoliths in addition to their X-XX NAME code, and allow for quick visual comparison of different or similar characteristics.

The practice question section under "Tutorials" is also a great resource that helps teaching how to analyze the monoliths and their characteristics. Unfortunately, the website is not laid out in a way that makes these resources as easy to use a study material. The SoilWeb site does a much better job at it, but there are accessibility issues with the section quizzes. Updating these resources so that they are mobile friendly would also make them significantly more useful as a student resource!

SN: 65697757



Q1: Suggestions on glossary and quizzes section

1



I will answer question 1 because I have some suggestions on soil glossary section and the quiz section. Firstly, for the glossary section, it is really helpful for reviewing the key definition when working on the assignment. However, it takes a long time to find the words especially when the word can be expressed in another way. It would be better if there is a keyword search system inside the glossary section. There is one for the whole soilweb, but it is less efficient because of some irrelevant things often pop out. Secondly, I like the quiz section a lot because it tests out whether you have mastered the key point or not. But it is not organized in the order of our lecture notes, so even though it can help with finals, it will be inconvenient for us for the midterms review. For example, the organic matter part we cover after midterm 1 is actually mixed up with the first part of the quiz section. Also, it will be better if there is more explanation for the choice questions.

--Yiyang 32386377

Can Soil Microbes Slow Climate Change?

This article is about how increasing fungi to bacteria ratios in soil will not only increase the health the soil but also increase the soils ability to remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it in soils. This finding was found by one scientist, David Johnson, but has received many critiques about his research. To decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Johnson believes that storing it in soil is the best solution. In his research he found that increasing the fungi to bacteria ratio (more fungi) increased carbon dioxide removal and also increase crop yield because microbes help restore balance in degraded soil making the microbiome more efficient. However, other scientists claim that this is not the best method as soils will eventually reach a cap on the amount of carbon they can hold and there as other methods to increase the ratio i.e. reducing tillage. This information is important to me because as an Environmental Science student, the major issue that we discuss is climate change. Since climate change is such a major concern and affects the planet in many different ways, it’s something that needs to be slowed down in any possible way- big or small. This article is about how soil microbes, which relates to our soil organism/biology section, and how their impact on soil might be able to slow climate change which is one of the small ways that can make a big difference.



Review and Reflect

1. I think sections in the Soil Web need more detail such as the Soil Organisms section. A lot of the important information about these organism were only shown to us in class and if did not have enough time to catch those notes I would not be able to refer to the Soil Web for that missing information. 2. The Wikipedia page on soil science (I used another source because there was no link provided) does go into material we learned in class such as SOM, soil compaction, etc. The Soil Web e-text is definitely easier to understand and provides a great summary of the material we went over this term. The Wikipedia page needs more information overall divided into the categories we learned soil physics, chemistry, biology and management. 3. There are almost no other outside resources for ALL information in this course that are not the textbook or lecture notes. I did find that videos (like the ones show in lab of Prof. Schmidt from SFU) were very helpful for my understanding. As well as the website where the video was from provided an excellent resource to the material because it wasn’t covered that in-depth in class.



Soil Science Articles on Wikipedia and SoilWeb200 e-textbook

Answer to Question #2:

The SoilWeb200 e-textbook material provided an easy to understand method of learning some course concepts which were difficult to understand or hard to remember. Due to this, I was able to utilize the website especially prior to midterms to review the course material. I was also able to take advantage of the quizzes in the e-textbook as they provided me with answers after I have attempted a question. This helps me significantly as I now know how much I know about the section of the course and which areas I need to study on. I also appreciate the photos added to some of the pages on the e-book to help me better learn the material. I am a visual learner, and this benefits me significantly. Therefore, I believe that the SoilWeb200 e-textbook is a fantastic resource to take advantage of for all students in the course.

On the other hand, I have also read many soil science articles on Wikipedia. Several Wikipedia pages had mostly text and not many photos, which made it difficult for me to understand the content. Furthermore, anyone from around the world is able to edit the pages on Wikipedia, whereas in SoilWeb200, the public is unable to make changes to the content of the pages. This makes it a more credible source compared to Wikipedia. As a result, I have found that the SoilWeb200 e-textbook was easier for me to understand course materials when compared to Wikipedia. To improve Wikipedia, I suggest adding more relevant photos of the various topics as this will help people learn the material more easily. (Gabriel Wan – 88631841)



Soil Web 200 Review and Reflection

Overall, I think that Soil Web 200 provides a concise yet comprehensive studying experience for APBI 200 students, and people who want to learn soil science in general. The well organized topics and tabs makes learning the right topics easy and convenient. The vocabulary used, as well as the length of the texts used are also perfect, with a few images and illustrations to help students understand the topics. I think that Soil Web 200 could be improved by using updated graphics, images, as well as the user interface as a whole, as the interface seems dated despite being already convenient. Some graphics in Soil Web 200 is also row resolution and with subpar quality, hence demotivating some students to study happily.



Review and Reflect 3.

  • URL: https://forestfloor.soilweb.ca/
  • Date:
  • Authors: Darrel Hoffman, Maja Krzic, Saeed Dyanatkar, Margaret Schmidt, Chris Crowley, Tom Scott, Kirk Karasin, Claire Roan, Shirley Ho, Les Lavkulich, Samson Nashon

Another source I used while learning concepts in APBI 200 was https://forestfloor.soilweb.ca/ ,a website dedicated to learning about the various horizons of soil in a forest floor environment. The website was created and updated by a team of people, including Darrel Hoffman, Maja Krzic, Saeed Dyanatkar, Margaret Schmidt, Chris Crowley, Tom Scott . . . & Samson Nashon. This source was brought to my attention by my APBI 200 lab section, and has proved to be an invaluable source of info regarding soil organic horizons.

This website provided numerous descriptions for the various organic horizons of a forest floor, along with descriptions about the variants of the soil and provides the occasional image as well. The brief descriptions and images help give a quick recap on what makes that particular soil considered a specific horizon, helping with studying the various aspects of each soil horizon.



Review & Reflect Soil Web 200

The soil web 200 is overall a great resource used to study APBI 200. However, it can be improved in a few minor details. I would suggest adding a search bar menu in order to access topics more simply. I struggled locating some topics that were much smaller in names and with a search bar menu that locates the chapter it would save me a lot more time. I do enjoy the glossary which did help, yet a search bar would aid in accessing topics faster rather than searching through different chapters. For example, when studying for my midterm I was looking through soil web 200 for a better definition of C/N ratio, I had to search through a few chapters which discourages me to just resort to other definitions. I did enjoy the Soil Web 200 as it did help me prepare for my exams yet this small tweak could really help improve the website and learning material.

SN:69197358



Lecture Content vs Extra Information

  • URL: N/A
  • Date: N/A
  • Authors: N/A

Question 1: The SoilWeb200 e-textbook is a resource that I used throughout the term and I found it very helpful. Specifically, seeing the layout of the topics was very useful for me as it helpful lay out a flow chart image of all the different things I needed to learn. However, one of the aspects that I felt could be improved is to more closely match the e-textbook to the course material for APBI 200. I found that a few times, there was a lot of extra information that we didn’t specifically learn in class or need to know for the exams. But, these sections made me very stressed as I thought I was lacking information or didn’t cover the material well enough. I understand that the SoilWeb200 e-textbook isn’t supposed to be an exact summary of the APBI 200 material. However, I think it might be helpful to somehow mark the material that is not covered directly in the APBI 200 lectures with a symbol or color-code. I think this way, students would save a lot of worry and stress about the material.



Review and reflect to SoilWeb200 e-text book

It offers me a better understanding about APBI200, and it helps me to solve many problem set and lab assignment questions, I prefer its interface in description part, the definitions and examples are vivid and clear, especially there are some images and framework structures. However, I think it could be better in section quizzes part, it is good when users answer one multiple choices the correct answer shows up and necessary explanation appears. Nevertheless, we cannot skip the questions and it is not flexible for users to answer the specific part users really want to improve, it may lost many users in this part. Furthermore, it also lack comments part, and users cannot find a straight way to give a feedback to the website, which is also a little problem need to be improved.



Lecture Slides and Notes

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

Question 1 Response: The one aspect of the Soil Web I found slightly challenging was the fluidity between slides and the notes section. Being on the school ski team and missing classes in result, I found the notes section very helpful in gaining a well-rounded understanding of each topic and relating information. Individually, both the slides and notes were great resources for learning. However, when going between each I found it difficult to narrow down which parts of the notes more directly linked to each daily lecture. I had to read through the notes sections almost as a whole and, although this was good for repetitive learning, it was quite time consuming. If there was more direction as to which section each lecture related to, I think it would make the notes section an even more powerful resource.



SoilWeb200 Review

SoilWeb2oo has been a very useful and convenient tool to use when testing myself on class materials. The questions were relevant to what we have been learning and tested my knowledge well. One way the quiz sections could be improved is if there was a way to see all the questions with their answers at the end of the quiz. This would avoid needing to go back and restart the entire quiz in order to view one question. Although, I liked how you were able to see the answers after every question so that I could immediately compare my answer before I forget it. Or, it would be very useful if the questions were numbered and students were able to click on numbers so we could skip to specific questions. Again, this would avoid having to click through all the questions in order to find and review the one you were looking for. Nevertheless, the quiz section was a wonderful resource that helped me immensely while studying for the midterms. They effectively reviewed and tested all the material in a practical manner.



Review and Reflect on SoilWeb200 e-textbook

The quizzes on soil web200 page is a useful tool for me to review important terms of the course. However, I think the format can be improved. The current format of the quizzes is getting answer after clicking "next" for each question. I found that I cannot benefit much from this format since it gives me quick and easy access to the answer before I can write down my own answer. I think a better quiz should allow me to write down answers of a series of questions and then compare my answer to the key. I remember a term better when I get it wrong at the first time and then correct it. My suggestion is let students type their answers and save for later correction.



Bonus: review and reflect

This site, The Nature Education Knowledge Project has a library section with many scientific resources. Under the topic of terrestrial geosystems, there is a section dedicated to soil and agriculture. Within this site there is a variety of subjects covered, such as, erosion, mineral and plant nutrition, water dynamics, soil biota and rhizosphere. The URL that I shared above is the link to an article about soil water dynamics. It covers water storage, moisture content, field capacity, permanent wilting point, influences of textures and water drainage. I found this website when I was trying to understand the influence of textures on soils more in-depth. It discusses tortuosity, hydraulic conductivity, pore size, and permeability. I think I found this resource particularly helpful because it included a table showing permeability and textural class. Also, there actual photographs that show soils and different colours that represent varying reduction or oxidation reactions. Another that I found helpful encompassed drainage class, water removed and water table height. All together, I think this resource helped reiterate the lecture material in different ways and example and aided me to deepend and widen my knowledge on certain topics that were covered in class. The scientific language is not too complicated and the use of graphs, tables and photos was very advantageous for learning.



Improvement of SoilWeb200

During the term, I have received any help from the SoilWeb200 e-textbook. And I really appreciate the presenting of resources from it. It summarizes and organizes the lectures note very clearly and gives me a thorough understanding. For the unit of soil classification, the one problem I would like to talk about is the memorization. Since there are many soil horizons that need to memorize, I suggest the SoilWeb200 should come out with more activities that help students to get familiar with the horizons without getting bored. Furthermore, I suggest to provide more practical questions for this unit so that students can understand the importance of identifying the soil horizons, the practical use of it and have an understanding of how the test would look like. Same for the unit of soil biology, the nutrient cycle (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus…) are hard to memorize and understand. But if there are presenting of video lecture that draws out the whole cycle’s process in motion, it would be more active and easy to understand. Lastly, for the whole section quiz, I suggest to include more short answers questions, it would be very helpful for our exams. Thanks!



Suggestion regarding the quizzes section

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

I have used this as a resource for studying both the first midterm and the second midterm, and I felt it was really helpful, allowing myself to grab an idea on what type of questions I should expect for exams, and also letting me have a greater understanding in each topic. However the way quiz sections were organized may have been a little more helpful if they were divided into sections under, for example, midterm 1 and midterm 2. This way it may have been easier for students to find quizzes for the exam they are studying with more ease. I also thought having a quiz section that quizzes us randomly for the range of each exam would have been very helpful too. It only has quizzes organized by section but I personally wanted on big quiz section that asked about all the topics that were covered for midterm 1 and midterm 2, and possibly for the final exam as well.



Review and Reflect Question 3

Youtube is often, in my opinion, one of the best learning resources, since a lot of professors, teachers, and researchers post videos on their page. Although, not everyone is accurate and reliable, therefore I tend to always rely on a youtube account called “Bozeman science”, who teaches anything science related to basic biology, to environmental science. His videos do not dive into a very detailed explanation of concepts, although, it is a great starting point for learning basic concepts. He divides his videos into different topics, such as soil horizons, water potentials, and nitrogen cycles, and etc. A few years back, I had the privilege of meeting him at my high school, where he gave a little speech about how he likes the accessibility aspect of youtube, and how this concept can help thousands of students in need of help studying. I found this YouTube account to be very reliable and helpful, due to its accessibility and varieties of topics he covers.



Videos help me learn better

There are identified other soil science learning resource on the web that can help me understand the concept about soil better, for me, watching videos is the most efficient way because simultaneously，people in the video will show some real examples and explain briefly. For example, I was confused about recognizing the soil horizons when I was sitting in class. But when I was watching the video on youtube, the poster show some clean samples and pointed out which horizons are belongs to soils, I can easily remember it.



More pictures with text to explain (by Shihan Zhang)

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

In the chapter of Horizons of soil. I suggested putting more picture with text to show differences horizons' characterizes and knowledge like vegetation, shape, elevation for different soil and horizons.



another soil science learning resource

I found this website useful because there are some soil formation, orders, classification pages that have infos could help me and there is a link page can direct you to other departments/websites may help you. And there is a Glossary page that has more than one hundred of horizons and its description, very convenient for me to look up and distinguish some rare horizons. And it is a Canadian website, it is better for a student in Canada to use.



  • URL: https://forestfloor.soilweb.ca/
  • Date:
  • Authors: Dr. Samson Nashon, Dr. Les Lavkulich, Shirley Ho , Claire Roan, Kirk Karasin, Tom Scott, Chris Crowley, Dr. Margaret Schmidt, Saeed Dyanatkar , Dr. Maja Krzic, Darrell Hoffman

I found the forest floor website to be very helpful in further understanding concepts in APBI 200. The various forest humus forms, forest floors, horizons and orders were explained very thoroughly with videos, graphics and an interactive website. The website provided a much more in depth cover of humus forms than covered in lecture, and helped me understand concepts clearly. Moreoverr, within the website there are tutorials, featuring multiple choice and long answer questions with answer keys, to test your knowledge on subjects and discover what concepts you have learned properly.



Review and Reflect

Overall, I found SoilWeb 200 to be a very valuable learning resource. I did my best to take notes in class, but when my notes were insufficient, it was very useful as a reference text to aid in my learning. My one complaint about this resource is that it was often difficult to find material that corresponded to a given lecture. All of the information was grouped by topic, however, I think it would have been more useful to have the SoilWeb 200 site more closely follow the class schedule, and maybe have the material organized chronologically by the day it was covered in class. This might just be me though.



Canadian Soil Information Service

This is the URL I found when I was learning APBI200 and querying online materials. I have to say that the website provided by the government is a useful learning webpage. It is not only highly credible, but also informative. In this page, you can use the search engine to search for the information you want to query. The URLs given are all provided by the government and relevant departments. Concrete and true. This will be a good tool for students to learn. The URL is free of charge and is a public resource. There is a lot of information that is up to date. There are many classifications of this website provided by the government, which will be clearly displayed on the webpage, and it does not take too much time to find the information you want. There will also be some pictures as an auxiliary guide. Greatly improved students' awareness of soil science. Of course, students still need to focus the class lecture as the main learning tool, but for assisted learning, this is a good tool. Therefore, I hope that students can search for information through this website while learning, and get the most effective and reliable information in the fastest way.



Review and Reflect on e-Textbook Quizzes

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

The quizzes provided on the on the SoilWeb200 e-Textbook benefitted my overall study for the midterms. They encompassed the major points that were established throughout the course. They had various types of questions and resembled questions that had a high chance of appearing on the exams – multiple choice, short answer, true/false etc. Some of the questions did have incorrect answers so it would be helpful if those could be updated if possible. It could be useful if there were questions that required us to look at certain data or diagrams and make inferences about them. Overall this resource was very helpful to me throughout this course in studying for exams.



SoilWeb 200 Review & Reflect

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

The SoilWeb 200 materials are overall an effective source that helps when reviewing or clarifying different topics learned in class. It not only allows us to review before exams, but there’s also sections where you can read topics that you didn’t fully understand in lecture which is very useful and easily understood. A suggestion to enhance this e-textbook may be to add a glossary section to define term that we are not familiar with. Also the quiz sections could be improved modifying it in a way where you can go back and see all the questions with their answers at the end of the quiz. This avoids going back and restarting the entire quiz in order to view one particular questions.



Pretty Useful

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

I think the soil web is pretty useful for us taking APBI200. Of course, it is sometimes a little bit sparse, but I guess that it was never the intention to pack it with every information. Thats what books are for. Anyways, I always used it to get enough Information about a topic to know what's going on and what else I have to look up. I like the illustrations, those are really informative and easy to understand. Maybe some pictures for the Classification would be nice, at least the most common ones.



Revies and Reflect

When I learned the soil components, I was not really clear about the relationship (especially about the water and air). This e-textbook taught me about it specifically. The soil wiki page is not good as the e-textbook because it provides lots of information that I don't wanna know. I am actually not finding another website to teach me the soil science, but I figured that searching what I don't know on google is a good way. I can get what I need within one page and less then ten minutes. Thus I think we can do some survey about what students usually search on google and post the popular things on the e-textbook.



Review and Reflect

Answer to Question 1: Soil Web 200 is an amazing resource and super helpful in the learning and understanding of major concepts throughout the course. Saying this, there are a few suggestions I have thought of that could enhance this feature even more. The first recommendation I have would be to either make the sections slightly more in order and in pace with the lectures or if this is too hard due to correct groupings perhaps include in each section which lecture(s) are covered. This would help because I often found this tool great for overall studying; however, when looking for a specific explanation from a lecture that week I would sometimes struggle to determine which section to look in and end up searching google instead. Another change that could potentially benefit the future students of Apbi 200 would be to somehow organize the sections so that the quizzes would relate more specifically to each midterm. This would be helpful because as I was doing the section quizzes to prepare for the midterms I was confused about the content required to know as the quizzes contained questions from material that had not been covered yet. This led me to studying a lot more content (unnecessarily) for midterm 1 as I was worried it was required to know which caused some extra stress. Overall though this resource is great and for studying in general is very helpful as the descriptions are easy to understand and provide sufficient detail.



Nutrient Cycles in soilweb200

The nutrient cycles part in SoilWeb200 is a pretty useful tool while we study the Nutrient Cycles. There are several figures of nutrient cycles including the Carbon cycle, Nitrogen cycle, Sulfur cycle, Phosphorus cycle, and Potassium cycle. In my opinion, maybe add some explanation of those transformations will be better for understanding. The definitions of soil science properties in Wikipedia are hard to understand most of the time. The explanations from SoilWeb200 usually provide a better understanding and further example of any specific concepts. I will strongly suggest adding a search function on SoilWeb200, and in that case, students are able to directly type what they want to read through the search functions. https://www.soilsofcanada.ca/index.php soil of Canada I found this website is useful because of most of the concepts that we learn in apbi200 can be found through this website, and give a clear explanation to each of them.



Question number 1

I found this SoilWeb200 e-textbook provides students with clear and easy to find online learning materials. It was very useful to understand the method of learning this course's concepts. I found this was a very useful resource when studying for exams as it gave a great summary of each topic with providing some specific examples. In particular, visualize of the layout of the topics was very useful for me because that layout helps me to understand and memorize more easily than just word descriptions. Moreover, the quiz provided on SoilWeb200 was convenient to study for the midterms. However, I think it can be improved if it displays the total score of the quiz when it completed. I also found the questions that are from topics not tested on the exam. Also, I would suggest adding a search bar menu in order to access topics more simply. I struggled to locate some topics that were much smaller in names and with a search bar menu that locates the chapter it would save me a lot more time. However, I think this can be improved in a few details.



Quiz Section Reflection (by Anika)

  • URL:
  • Date: April 2/2019
  • Authors:

In general, the soil web website should be praised for it's usefulness and easy accessibility. Terminology goes into deeper detail, enough so to help construct answers for problem set or lab assignments, and course modules are very well organized, it does not take long for students to find the information they need. The flaws of this website were not significant, but small improvements can be made to cover them up. The quiz section needed the most amount of attention, if not all the attention. The questions that pop out come in a specific order, it'd be more useful if the order was randomized. It'd also be useful if students can reflect what topic they are weakest in.

Winston He 83937771



Review and Reflect

  • URL: {{{URL}}}
  • Date: {{{Date}}}
  • Authors: {{{Authors}}}

I found SoilWeb200 to be a really effective e-textbook and overall good resource for learning and engaging with the course material. I did find a couple things that could be improved within the website. Firstly, although the quizzes were very helpful and a great study tool, I found them to be a little confusing and tedious to navigate. If there was a guide or index for the questions included in each section, or if the quiz questions were solely separated into each sub-section of each main section on the website (ex. Soil Classification – Factors of Soil Formation), the questions would be more easy to navigate through (instead of clicking 'next' through the numerous amount of questions). Secondly, I found that Soil Biology’s Soil Organisms section could be updated to simplify the information, or by adding a graph summarizing each organisms’ name, picture, function etc. for study usage and to grasp key concepts within the huge set of information on this page. Overall, SoilWeb200 is a great resource and one of the best engaging e-textbooks I’ve seen thus far.



Review and Reflect

The SoilWeb2000 e-textbook has been very useful to me. Every time I got stuck with the lab assignments or got confused about some questions after class, I have always used this e-textbook because it has mostly been able to answer my questions. Moreover, I can always access this e-textbook basically from everywhere, including my phone and my laptop even while I am on the way to school.

Unfortunately, even though it has been very useful, the e-textbook contains some minor and major bugs. The major bug is that sometimes the next button is not showing, so I cannot move on to the next page. On the other hand, the minor bug is that sometimes the links that are used in the e-textbooks are not working.

Overall, the textbook has been very useful, but the bugs need to be fixed, and every week I think there should be maintained to check if there are any bug present.

Besides using the SoilWeb2000 e-textbook, a learning resource on the web that I found useful to learn concepts in APBI 200 is https://www.khanacademy.org/. I learned concepts like the biogeochemical cycles (the nitrogen and phosphorous cycle) through this website, and it is brought by and supported by the AMGEN Foundation. I found it helpful because the whole website is free, and every lesson is self-paced so that it is possible to re-watch the videos over and over again until I understand it, and I find the videos relatively easy to understand.



Improvements for Soilweb200 Quizzes

  • URL: N/A
  • Date: April 4th 2019
  • Authors: N/A

Question 1



When taking a quiz, currently, there is a question posed under a progression bar, informing the quiz taker how far through the quiz they are. With MC and multiple answer questions, students make their selection and then click next to see if they selected the correct answer. The questions are of good quality and have indeed helped me personally throughout the course with studying and exam preparation, although the layout is strange and could be improved to be significantly more useful and beneficial to students using this medium of studying. How I suggest this improvement be made is changing the quiz format closer to that of Canvas. The proposed improvement would be for multiple choice questions specifically, and would, for example, look something like this: a question is posed under a progress bar, the student can choose their answer and click next which continues directly onto the next question without telling the student whether they got the question right or wrong (like a real exam). At the end of the quiz the questions should be laid out and marked either right or wrong with summary answers written near them when they chose incorrectly. The students should be able to see a mark based off how many they got correct and potentially guide a student to the review pages via hyperlink if they performed badly within a specific topic. Also the section quizzes should be broken up into smaller review quizzes rather than 40 questions.

Review and Reflect on SoilWeb200's content arrangements and Quiz Section

SoilWeb200 is a very useful resource to help me study APBI 200. Compared to lecture notes, the e-textbook has put the knowledge into word. The lecture notes often contain more images and graphs, which help me learn visually. However, sometimes I could not follow the flow of ideas in them. This is when SoilWeb200 becomes useful. In my perspective, these two sources are in a complementary relationship. Certain improvements on the e-textbook can be made to further enhance this relationship. Firstly, the contents on SoilWeb200 can be re-arranged in a way that corresponds with the flow of lectures. For example, the topic “soil formation factors” was covered in Lecture 3 and “soil water” was covered in Lecture 4. When I reviewed these two topics on SoilWeb200, I thought they should be under the same section, but they do not. It took me a while to figure out how things are arranged in the e-textbook. It was not only time-consuming but also could disrupt my thinking processes. Therefore, it would be great to re-arrange its contents following the outline of lectures. In this way, it will be less confusing for students. Moreover, the Quiz section could be further improved by allowing students to see the complete list of all questions and can choose the particular question they want to view freely. Sometimes I would only want to check with one question, but I had to go through many other questions. The proposed improvement can increase the efficiency of learning.



  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

Soil Web 200 is a very useful resource to ensure we understand what we've learnt in class. In particular, I found the quiz useful in clearing up misconceptions I had in some course content. The quick summaries on each topic are great for last minute studying (although not recommended). However, as an APBI 200 study, I think the website is not very well organized. I am not sure whether the website is also used in other courses, but for APBI200 purposes, it will be better if it's organized by the topics we learnt (eg soil physics, soil chemistry, fertility (all the nutrient cycle stuff)...) Especially for the quizzes, it would be nice if we can isolate individual topics when studying for midterms. I know there is a separate website for forest floors, but it would be nice if soil web 200 also includes some information on forest floors.



Comments on SoilWeb 200 [posted by Megan Mak]

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

Soil Web 200 is a very useful resource to ensure we understand what we've learnt in class. In particular, I found the quiz useful in clearing up misconceptions I had in some course content. The quick summaries on each topic are great for last minute studying (although not recommended). However, as an APBI 200 study, I think the website is not very well organized. I am not sure whether the website is also used in other courses, but for APBI200 purposes, it will be better if it's organized by the topics we learnt (eg soil physics, soil chemistry, fertility (all the nutrient cycle stuff)...) Especially for the quizzes, it would be nice if we can isolate individual topics when studying for midterms. I know there is a separate website for forest floors, but it would be nice if soil web 200 also includes some information on forest floors, or perhaps put an URL on to refer to the related sections on the forest floor website. Also, I had a hard time connecting related topics to the whole system. For example, it's hard to link the ability for plants to uptake nutrient to CEC, C:N in organic matter, or even soil structure. It will be great if there are resources to help us to interconnect concepts from different parts of the course.



reflection

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

Soil web is a very helpful and friendly website. It could offer all the information that is exactly what I need for deeper study on this course. A very helpful source is given by soilweb when I study for the exams and review by going over lecture notes. What’s more, extra information is also given when I got problems working on homework and problem sets. However, there are several points I believe there are significant improvements that could be made. First, the information given by e-book on the website should be closer to the lecture. Some of materials are kind of confusing to start with. I could not find the easy way to get to the information I need at the beginning. It gets better after the midterm with extra learning in this course, but clarity can still play an important role in explaining more and helping the person who enters the website. Another development could be made on this website would be making the website more “detailed”. Compared to Wikipedia and google, our website still lacks of very organized and detailed information and tools which are effective enough. (Ming Lou 63830591)



  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

The SoilWeb200 e-textbook is very user-friendly and portable as it is able to be accessed on mobile too. This allows for studying on the go without having to lug around a heavy textbook. I like how concisely organized the e-book is as it allows me to find the solutions to problems very rapidly. Although it is lacking in certain areas such as information on the nutrient cycle, I can always use other sources as a supplement to fill in the gaps.

Ernie Chou 53166187



Really useful website for soil classification

The link above is a really great tool to use for looking up the differences between each soil order. It has really great graphs and diagrams that further help your understanding. The website not only describes what each soil order does, but it gives you points on how to decipher the soil order from the other ones. The information is reliable and up to date from the Government of Canada. With this website, I was able to easily jump between soil orders to soil order from the “table of contents” tab. The best part is, there is every single soil order we have learnt in class!



1. Well, they could improve on the quiz portion. Sometimes when I input answer, it wouldn't give me an answer back and sometimes when you do get a correct answer. Another section is probably the soil acidity section as I think their should be more explanation in describing various reactions (eg soil buffering capacity. Sometimes, going through the slides, it just doesn't explain as much.

2. Generally, the sections under this wiki page just summarizes information into a compact section. I probably find the e textbook easier to understand as it goes more into depth, sometimes providing pictures. In order to improve this wikipedia material, probably just add more info regarding the topic.

3. Generally, if I had trouble with something, I would just google it. But then generally I only relied on the lecture notes and etext book as it basically covers everything needed in this class.



Tool for APBI200 learning

This website provide lots of useful knowledge about soil science. You can find lot of experiment report on the website and also include other basic information like definition to terms such as 2:1 clay or 1:1 clay. The website is ran by Jame Hutton limited and directed by Prof. Stephen Hillier with many other great scientist who mainly focus on subject of X-ray diffraction and sandstones. I found this website when I was search more information about phyllosilicate clay.



Review and reflect #3

There is an another recourse that I used during the term, it was a website which provide a great deal of descriptions for the soil formation and soil classification, those informations were very useful when I study APBI200. For soil formation, this web shows a series of picture which explained some of things I had been think of. For instance, Simonson proposed the soil formation could be divide in two major step which are the accumulation of the parent material and the differentiation of the horizons within the soil profile by soil formation process. Also, there are some brief descriptions help me to better understand the concept of soil factors. In the part of soil classification, it gives me an excellent example of grassland soil especially when I was thinking about my lab assignment. In addition, this website also described the four main soil orders for forested landscape throughout Canada, there are Organic, Luvisolic, Brunisolic, and Podzolic. Therefor, I consider this website broadens my horizons and help me a lot.



Bonus Assignment - Review and Reflect - Dilraj

The URL provided above is of the page that lists the soil orders. It is titled: 'Canadian System of Soil Classification'



Dilraj T. Review and Reflect

For this bonus assignment I will focus on the first question: “What aspect of the SoilWeb200 e-textbook could be improved to help you better learn the material covered in APBI 200? Focus on one or two specific units in the SoilWeb200 e-textbook.”

From my experience, I will say that the SoilWeb200 e-textbook was very straightforward, simple, and concise; everything was easy to read and it basically gave the information. One thing that can be improved is that videos (or at least images) could possibly be added for the soil orders tab under the soil classification section; this would make it easier for us to compare and contrast the different orders of soil, and their diagnostic horizons in one given spot. I understand that the question is asking to pay attention to specific units, but what I also think could use improvement would be the quizzes for the sections (section quizzes).

My suggestion for the quizzes is that the system should be set up in a way such that at the end, it compiles a list that tells the individual the questions that they got wrong. With this list, the system should then keep targetting those same questions at the quiz taker until they have successfully understood the answer. This, in my opinion, would be much better than the individual taking the quiz all the way from the beginning again and being faced with those easier questions that they already know the answer to. To make things even greater, it would be cool if the quizzes could be more interactive, such as having minigames involving fill-in-the-blank and flashcards (kind of how the problem sets were fun to complete with the crosswords).

Article “Can Soil Microbes Slow Climate Change? One scientist has tantalizing results, but others are not convinced.” Scientific American.

This article describes the findings of microbiologist David Johnson, who conducted a project by increasing soil microbiota, and reported that he gained 11 metric tons of soil carbon per hectare; 10 times more than soils usually sequester. He also found that increasing the soil bacteria-to-fungi ratio caused soil to release less CO2. He criticized Glyphosate for killing the necessary Aspergillus fungus, an indicator of fungal presence, and noted that problematic fertilizers are often used to increase the limiting nutrient nitrogen, but the research claimed that microbial soil naturally increases nitrogen for plant growth, rendering fertilizer unnecessary. He noted that this approach provides 500-600 dollars of benefits such as reduced irrigation and increased fertility.

The article cited one research scientist who debated this, explaining that the sequestration wouldn’t happen the same way in different ecosystems, and pointed out that carbon sequestration reaches capacity in soil and is not a long-term solution. Another scientist criticized Johnson’s findings for not being peer evaluated research, warning that they should not be presented as facts and noting that reducing tillage can have similar effects to Johnson’s unconventional approach.

However, since climate change is a pressing problem, the soil microbiome could be researched in the future to determine if this is a feasible way to take some carbon out of the air. The article discusses that there may be a “new paradigm” in managing soils on agricultural land, with climate change in mind instead of only increasing yield.

This article relates to topics studied in APBI200, including the role of soil organisms and their effects on the carbon cycle. This is relevant to me as someone who hopes to pursue agricultural studies and to any other human, since CO2 and other greenhouse gas levels contribute to the changing climate, resulting in unpredictable changes ecosystems that we should all be concerned about. Agricultural activity can greatly impact greenhouse gas levels, and therefore it is our responsibility to choose to cultivate the land in a way that minimizes or possibly reverses these impacts.



Question 1, 84761261

I find the soil web e-textbook to be quite useful to study. In particular, I like how the quizzes are organized by sections. We could decide on what part of the quiz we need to focus on and where are strength and weaknesses is at. To me, the recent materials such as soil classification hard. The soilweb delivers information in an ordered way. The factors of formation is introduced, then the formation process, and the soil horizons and etc. This helps me to review the lecture by order. More importantly, the concise content guides me to see the key points to learn and the precise terminology, such as translocation processes. If there were one thing I would change about the soil web, is that I would include more details from the lab manual to the web, so that we don’t have to go back and forth for information.



I believe that since those three pedology lectures were the most chalanging sections in the course contents, it would be a good idea to add a summary section which concises all these materials. I believe using a table as well as a diagram could relavates the related concepts together and make it easier for us to memorize and categorize soil orders. Also, categorizing each concept in a particular color may help students to remember different properties of every distinct soil.

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:




I believe that since those three pedology lectures were the most chalanging sections in the course contents, it would be a good idea to add a summary section which concises all these materials. I believe using a table as well as a diagram could relavates the related concepts together and make it easier for us to memorize and categorize soil orders. Also, categorizing each concept in a particular color may help students to remember different properties of every distinct soil.

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:




Question 2: Comparing to the e-textbook, Wiki page is more easier to find the relevant pages through the links,and the it contain more general information of the soil science. It has separated the topic into few general bigger topics for easier finding information. However, the knowledge that we have learned is only part of all topics. Therefore, my suggestion is to reorganize the order of those topics from easy to difficult in order to make students to learn easier.



Question 2

Question 2: Comparing to the e-textbook, Wiki page is more easier to find the relevant pages through the links,and the it contain more general information of the soil science. It has separated the topic into few general bigger topics for easier finding information. However, the knowledge that we have learned is only part of all topics. Therefore, my suggestion is to reorganize the order of those topics from easy to difficult in order to make students to learn easier.



Review and Reflect

Overall, I found Soilweb200 to be a very valuable learning resource for this course. I only have 2 suggestions for improvement. First, I feel that the section on pedogenesis is somewhat short, and could benefit from being more comprehensive. Also, it would be better if the site was laid out chronologically in the order of the lectures, as sometimes it was difficult to find topics pertaining to a given lecture.



Review Quizzes

In response to: (1) “What aspect of the SoilWeb200 e-textbook could be improved to help you better learn the material covered in APBI 200? Focus on one or two specific units in the SoilWeb200 e-textbook” I felt that an area that could be improved upon is the available quizzes on the SoilWeb200 website. The review quizzes do not always give the correct answer, which make the quizzes difficult to use as review of one’s knowledge. For example, the Section Quiz for Interactions Among Soil Components (http://soilweb200.landfood.ubc.ca/interactions-among-soil-components/section-quiz-2/) does not give the correct answer once the student inputs their answers into the quiz. One might say that the quiz still provides benefits from access to example questions which might appear on the mid-terms or final exam, but answers still need to be verified by using notes, which makes it difficult to quickly work through the review quizzes. Additionally, I like to use my final grade on review quizzes to indicate improvement in my knowledge. By not presenting the final cumulative grade for review quizzes, it makes it difficult to track whether a student is improving in course material knowledge. Lastly, dividing review quizzes based on midterms would make it easier for students to study. Acknowledging that SoilWeb200 might be used by students or professors outside of UBC’s APBI 200, LFS might consider creating a separate review quiz based on material covered in the midterms, to allow students to review many topics, more so than are featured on the practice midterms. I felt that most of the material on the SoilWeb200 e-textbook provides suitable contribution to the material covered in class, with the review quizzes being the only area that seemed to need improvement.

- Alex Martin



Supplemental learning material: filling in the gaps

3)The article I read was called, "What Will Your Soil Support?". I needed some help understanding which soils had the greatest load bearing capacity after our first midterm. I hadn't come across any particularly helpful information regarding this specific soil characteristic, which soil texture plays a large part of. I found this article written for civil engineering students, and it explained how texture influenced load bearing capacity and listed data of load bearing capacity from clayey to sandy/gravelly soils, to solid rock. It was cool to see soil knowledge that was deemed most important from another discipline's perspective.




Genuine Review and Reflection on question 3

  • URL: n.a
  • Date: Mar.23th
  • Authors: n.a.

I found discussion forum a great place to ask questions and learn from other people’s mistake, however, I think it would be even better if on the discussion forum there is a notification column for all the notices where people can post things like “new updates”, “online classes” and all other questions related to “lab time” and “”submission due dates”. Therefore, in the other part of the discussion forum, it is only for asking academic related questions. In this way, everything is more clear and students know exactly where to find things they are looking for, instead of getting loss in tons of the information. Beside wiki and lab manual, I also find the YouTube videos very helpful, such as “ Introduction to Soil Science [Year-1] - YouTube" They are good for recapture different concepts we learned in the class. Also, I really enjoy studying the soil science website Maja created, in there I can find a lot of practice questions and chapters are very nicely organized, it helped me reviewing for different concepts in soil science very well too. I think based on my experiences, if I conquer all the vocabularies in soil science(which means I not only know what they mean but can relate them with connected terms) I can get a very high mark in soil science. So I encourage students in the future to use flashcards and test themselves. There can be a column in the soilscience website with flashcards.


Davida Wang 36640910



Review and Reflect - SoilWeb200 e-textbook

  • URL: Not applicable
  • Date: March 28th, 2020
  • Authors: Not applicable

I think it would be beneficial to integrate more videos and interactive options in the SoilWeb200 e-textbook. In our labs, we watched videos from the Forest Floor Lab that provided visuals with accompanying explanations about key concepts – a format that would be helpful for topics like classification where the formation of soils can be further explored. Providing this visual would be helpful to students to show the chronological stream of events and how it all comes together. As well, this suggestion could be applied to more complex topics like soil chemistry where students who did not take high school chemistry may have trouble visualizing topics on their own. Furthermore, this topic could benefit greatly from more applied examples where we can see how we will use soil chemistry in our careers as land managers.

Rosalia Jaffray 89925416



Review and Reflect

For the soilweb200 website, if we can add more sub-classification into the chart then it will be more direct. (for example, for the soil order chart, we can add more columns to describe which orders belong to the grassland surface and which orders are typically in the deciduous and coniferous forest) At the same time, if there are more detailed photos for illustrating the soil horizon(like the one we see from UBC web: having specific units(cm) for u to compare it will be better for us to understand and distinguish) For the comparison between Wikipedia and Soilweb200, I find out that it is easier to see from the soilweb200 version. Because the soilweb covers the related and interesting photos and vdeios that I can look detailedly on. Compare to that, the Wikipedia just seems a little bit bland. So for Wikipedia, if it can list some core points out, like the direct distinction, it’s will be perfect. Besides the two resources I mention, I also use the website: soils of Canada(provided in the link), because it has a lot of flow diagrams that can help me understand the processes fully.

Han Yan 92917988



Review and Reflect

I used SoilWeb200 often for studying and it does help me immensely when there are topics I don't understand, however, it was hard to navigate and find material that corresponded with lecture material. If I were to improve the e-textbook, I'd rearrange the units and the section quizzes to match the unit order of the class. Also, the material in the soil acidity unit seems a bit vague, the basic understanding of soil and acidity is covered but not enough detail for answering exam-like questions. Oakley Kang 66601940



Another soil science learning resource

For question 3, I found YouTube to be very helpful for me to learn concepts in APBI 200. Whenever I encounter difficult to understand some concepts and terms during a preview or review, I will try to search for video explanations of the related chapters about soil science. The reason for using youtube is that I think the video teaching is more concise and easy to follow than the knowledge explained in the article and people can adjust the speed and progress of the videos. Tasso Hu 17865882



Soil Web 200 e-textbook reflection

I really liked SoilWeb200; and felt like it enriched the course for me. It explained things a different way than the lectures, and having two different formats makes me think about topics more thoroughly, which I really like. I used it the most for boosting my knowledge about topics I missed when I missed lecture. However, I felt like a few things about the user interface could’ve been improved to enrich my learning. First, the quizzes (and SoilWeb section modules overall) don't exactly follow the course. That was fine when clicking to an individual chapter, but it meant that the quizzes can’t be done to completion until the course is finished, and I think the quizzes are useful to do as we move through the material. Also, the quiz UI could be improved by enabling one to be able to click to any question, and not have to answer every single one (i.e., the way that canvas allows you to select question 8 while you are on question 1). Some pages seem to be built better than others in Soil Web. For example, the mineral components page is really built-out with a hyper-linked table of contents; lots of good headings. Not every page is like that (i.e. no table of contents for organic components), and homogenizing those features would make the website as a whole easier to navigate. Great tool though! Keeping it public is awesome - a friend asked me for a resource to talk about soil horizons with and I sent them the link! They really liked it. STUDENT: Declan Taylor



Review and Reflect: Soils of Canada

This source is very helpful in APBI 200 because it is quite similar to SoilWeb200 but it goes more in-depth (a better explanation) about some of the soil types. I found this helpful when doing the labs because it would explain more about what to look for in the soil (for example when classifying soil as lacustrine or marine, it more thoroughly explained the processes in which those types of soils are created and what to look for in the soil sample). Overall, the Soils of Canada site was useful as it explained what we had learned in class in a different way, often with a more detailed description that also did not add in many (if at all) irrelevant details that are not needed in APBI 200.



Soil Formation and Orders sections from Soils of Canada website

A soil science learning resource that I found useful to learn APBI 200 concepts is the Soils of Canada website. To be more specific, the Orders and Soil Formations sections of the website enhanced my understanding and applications of the APBI 200 concepts of soil orders and soil horizons. These two particular sections of the website served as a valuable reference that explained the concepts learned in APBI 200 in greater detail. Whenever I struggled to grasp the importance or application of a particular soil order or horizon, the Soils of Canada website was there with interesting explanations of soil horizons or order applications in Canadian soils.

Victor Lum



Soil Classification on Wikipedia vs. Soil Web

The Wikipedia article on the Canadian system of soil classification is similar to the equivalent section of SoilWeb, but with more written information. For example, the Wikipedia article contains much more text and explanations about the history of each soil order, and where it can be found in Canada. This is useful because it provides more background information about each soil order, which makes memorization easier. It also helps the reader understand the modern relevance of each order by explaining where each order is found in Canada. However, unlike the SoilWeb page on classification, the Wikipedia article does not specifically highlight each order's diagnostic horizon. The SoilWeb page on soil classification is easy to understand because it uses a chart format to identify diagnostic horizons and important characteristics, while the Wikipedia article just supplies the reader with a bulk of text, making it difficult to identify the key points. I would improve the Wikipedia article by adding a chart at the end of the text descriptions of each order with the diagnostic horizon and key characteristics or important points of information. This would act as a summary to the paragraph descriptions, making it easier to decipher the necessary information. Student: Zoe Kinnard



Threats to soil productivity threaten food security

I found this article useful in learning concepts in APBI 200. The article connects essential concepts that are central in creating informed soil science professions. For example, the article submits that degradation has increased the demand for synthetic fertilizer while the natural resources for making the products continue shrinking (Science Daily). In turn, the prices of fertilizers increase, leading to a rise in the price of foods (Science Daily). I found the article helpful because it provides a logical explanation of the adverse effects of soil degradation on food production and affordability. Review and Reflect The materials presented in SoilWeb200 are informative. I find them articulate and systematic in helping learners understand fundamental issues in soil science. Particularly, Krzic’s article on soil management has provided vital insights into grasping important knowledge regarding the course. It conducts an in-depth discussion on soil degradation around the world and succeeds in showing that it entails a serious problem requiring swift corrective action (Krzic). The article begins with simple ideas and moves on to complex issues in advancing the discussion on soil management. I found this useful because it provided a solid base upon which complex topics could be comprehended.



Review and Reflect (reviewing the etext - SoilWeb200)

Answering question 1 specifically. I think the SoilWeb200 is a wonderful resource and especially find the quizzes to be helpful to get extra practice with the material. However, I noticed on some multi-choice multiple choice questions, it wouldn't show me which were correct or incorrect, it would just move onto the next question. A potential bug there maybe or something to do with my web browser I'm not sure. Anyhow, other than that I'm the type of person who really finds practice problems/mock exams and these sorts of resources extremely helpful, and having additional ones on hand that are not just regular assignments like the labs or problem sets were really helpful to me. Some possible improvements made to the soilweb200 could be less block text if possible, maybe by breaking it up every section with a variety of resources (like a video on soil classification, text on soil formation, interactive quiz on soil horizons, etc). I know for me, Khanacademy has always been a resource I've really loved using because of the fact they have multiple ways to make the material interactive and engaging. Although, khanacademy does not offer anything on soil sciences it's really helped me with chemistry or math for example. I just enjoy the formats/styles they use. All in all, soilweb200 is something special since I haven't seen a resource quite like it and I definitely think the quiz feature is my favorite aspect of it. Good work! :)

- Mirleigha Durward-McLean (#94124617)



Review and Reflect: Soil Biology, Quizzes, and Format - Gretchen MacNaughton

Question 1: What aspect of the SoilWeb200 e-textbook could be improved to help you better learn the material covered in APBI 200?

As a more general suggestion to SoilWeb200, regarding quizzes, I would recommend that once finished the quiz, a total score is given (correct/incorrect). Although this is given in each question, I believe that it would be helpful to students as it would give a broader view of their understanding of each unit. For the “Soil Biology” unit, the format starts with the nutrient cycles and then progresses to soil organisms. I believe that it would be helpful if the soil organisms came first, and then were incorporated into each nutrient cycle, so that we can see a broader view of the role that organisms play in the nutrient cycle (N cycle, etc.). When using SoilWeb200, I found that at times the class notes didn’t match up with the order of information on soil web. If possible, organizing the two together in a way that information may be easier to find, would be an improvement. Overall, I found SoilWeb200 very helpful, especially when doing labs or problem sets in which I needed more detail than the slides provided. I also enjoyed the search tool in the soil web, because it often allowed me to find old lab manual/lecture notes that had different information than I was given. Gretchen MacNaughton 83180455



Question 1, improved soil web

The soil web has been a great resource which I am glad to have available to me as an APBI 200 student. I also hope to be able to use this in the future. However, it would be helpful to have another tab which would help link different parts of the soil to different topics we have learned. You could start with an interactive picture or web which start with a map of BC and the different soil orders and then each order can be clicked on. This would then take you to a soil profile under that order with the different horizons labeled. Each horizon could be clicked on and in the litter or A horizon you could click to see the biological activity. When clicking on a parent material link you could then see what different modes of deposition could have been part of the creation of that soil. It would simply be a way to connect all the different topics we have learned to a soil in BC or possibly even other regions. This would help learn as different topics could be connected more easily. Nathan Litster 67498337



Review and Reflect: Soils of Canada (Q.3)

Soils of Canada is another source I use to gain a better understanding of soil formation, orders, and soil classification. It gives additional information on top of the lectures and Soil webs, and it a good source to look at when you are studying. All the topics we learned on soil classification is essentially summarized on here and it has definitely helped me gain more knowledge on the different soil formation processes and orders. The glossary at the end of the site is useful to describe the difference between the horizons. Memorizing the different orders and such can be a challenge and I like how this site is a good and easy read. It made it natural to memorize the different soil processes and orders. Another thing I like about this site is that there is a background section that tells us the individuals behind the creation of this site. It shows us that members of soil scientists are from private sector, university and government organizations have contributed to this site from all regions and environments in Canada and it further legitimizes the accuracy of the information presented. Overall, it’s a great additional source for studying.

Student: Linda Lum



Review and reflect

1. The Soilweb200 e-textbook has been a tremendous help in studying for this class and I really appreciate there is a resource as convenient and in-depth for us APBI200 students. The only thing I think that would improve Soilweb200, or should be added on as another material to help us learn, would be a webpage for practice problems already done and worked out for us to look at. I struggle a lot of times in knowing whether or not my answer to a question is in depth enough, or specifically addressing things that need to be addressed for full credit on exams. Especially towards the beginning of the course this would have been useful, as I found myself on other soil science websites trying to look up how to solve certain problems that I had trouble with understanding on labs. Of course I understand I could come in during office hours for clarification, but an easily accessible space online where I could look at worked out practice problems would be a nice addition. -Lauren Snow



Review and Reflect - SoilWeb200 Structure

(Note: I realize I was instructed to comment on a specific page for SoilWeb200, not the website as a whole, but thought this feedback would be more valuable, as it is immediately when I thought of when reading the assignment instructions. If this does not qualify for a bonus mark, I understand. Thank you so much for considering this! Jessica Schmidt, 70714928) While I found the SoilWeb200 page to be a helpful resource, I found it frustrating to look for specific information when I needed it. For example, the other day I was trying to get more information on how sodium content affects the soil (how plants grow, how structure changes, etc.), and ended up just having to manually click through every header that looked promising, one by one, until I found the information I was looking for. To help avoid this issue, I would suggest a search tool and keywords for each page. For example, if I search sodium in this search bar, all pages on SoilWeb200 with a keyword including ‘sodium’ would pop up as options. I do know there is a search button on SoilWeb200 right now, but when used, it includes results from all ubc.ca pages. Maybe there are other ways to solve this issue, but I think future students would get a lot of value out of being able to quickly track down information they are missing in their notes/understanding. Other than that, I really love the SoilWeb200 resource, and use it frequently to prepare for exams or improve on my class notes.



Review and Reflect for Q1

I am focusing on the soil erosion section. For the accelerated erosion, it says that human activities may accelerate the soil erosion, maybe adding some examples for that will be quite useful for understanding. There is a link for the animation of examing a landscape formed by erosion, I feel like maybe add a video or photo will be better than just a link to the animation, because I guess not everyone has the logon rights. For the Mechanics of the three steps to accelerated erosion by water, maybe an animation will be better understanding. Providing some examples for each type of water erosion will be great.



Review and Reflect for Question #1

SoilWeb200 has been extremely helpful during this course. I found it most contributing when I was reviewing for the exams or when I need more explanations regarding materials in lab manual or lectures. I think one thing that could be improved on the website is the table of content because sometimes I found it hard to find the material that I am looking for. I think if the materials list on the web and the lectures can be listed in the same order it will be much easier to look for. For example, the lecture notes in UBC Wiki for this course.

Yunshu Du (Lily)



Useful website for learning APBI200 and reflection of Soilweb200

Quizlet is useful studying website that I used to learn APBI200. It is really different to learn some definitions in this course as a non-native English speaker sometimes. Although we have some recommend textbooks and I tried to read them. It is hard to find some specific definition that I want to know, since there are too much content in the textbook and it is not easy to find information. Recommend textbooks are really useful and well organized, but since reading textbook is time-consuming, quizlet can help us more quickly find the definition we want to know. Quizlet use word cards to organize all words about soil formation and put them into different collections, which is straightforward and easier. Soil web is a useful website as well. Especially after we move all the courses online, it is hard for us to continue our lab and observe soil sample. Soil web has all different soil sample profile picture that we can observe. However, I think soilweb200 still need some improvement. Now it does not be organized according to our learning process, so sometimes it is hard to find more information that we learnt in the lecture. Stephanie Yang



Make it correspond with lecture slides as well as improve the search function

Question #1 The one thing that would be incredibly helpful would be to organize this website to reflect the lecture slides and topics because oftentimes, I would find myself digging through all over the website and it would be confusing. Another thing that would be a good function to have is to improve the search function to search solely the soilweb200 (in addition to the UBC database) because if I wanted to search something, I would just have to look for it instead of using the search bar because it would redirect me to other ubc websites with the keyword I typed in.

Student: En Jung (Jessy) Hwang



Nick Somers Review/Reflect

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:




1. The SoilWeb200 e-text was a good resource to use but I sometimes found that the specific information we learned in lecture wasn't necessarily expanded on in the textbook. Personally, I have used textbooks in the past as an intial introduction to a concept and then also a reinforcement tool for midterm and exam studying. However this textbook sometimes did not read very easily and I know that it is hard to have a linear book following the course outline, but maybe in the future you guys (Dr. Brown and Dr. Krzic) could post which sub-heading or section would be most important for each lecture to be familiar with. Specifically, I thought that the section on the nutrient cycles should be expanded on a lot. Given how much we covered these cycles in class I was surprised to find very little textbook information and for next year I would’ve appreciated more depth or even more resources for us to check out! Secondly, the issue of not understanding diagrams in class. I sometimes would find myself taking notes on a diagram I didn’t understand but knew that I would try to learn it when I got home. However, the textbook doesn’t often give a verbal explanation in conjunction with a familiar picture or diagram. For next time, I think it would be really helpful for students to look at the diagram on the slide and then also have a verbal explanation on the side so that we can be sure to have the resources even if we missed a class or weren’t able to take notes as quickly on particular sections.

Soil science learning resources

Despite being a less conventional learning resource for a university class, something I came across this term that I ended up spending time looking at was the Soil 4 Kids website. I personally was interested in this site because for the past few years I've worked in outdoor education, teaching simplified concepts about forests, animals, and soil to kids. For example, we play a tag-style game where kids are sand, silt, and clay. Through these jobs, I've found that the best way to learn is to teach others, and these jobs are what inspired me to come to university and learn more about what I was teaching.

So, I found this website useful because it gave me ideas for my work, and gave me specific ideas of how I could start to explain what I've been learning in APBI 200 to the kids I work with. I figured that some other students in this class may have similar jobs or might also find this website useful for the same reasons. I particularly liked the Soil Experiments section and thought the Berlese Funnel experiment seemed interesting.

Temma Shanoon 11090453



Reflecting on SoilWeb200

Question 1:

In general, the SoilWeb 200 e-textbook is great. It is super helpful for getting a bit more in-depth information on what we hear in lecture and the end of section quizzes really help get you prepared for exams! But sometimes the sections can seem a little too short, or not in-depth enough to give you a good picture, for example with the various nutrient cycles other than nitrogen. Some more videos could be added right into the page for better understanding, there are so many good ones online! As much as I did find the quizzes useful, they are somewhat out of date, at least in regard to the lectures! For example, when it comes to soil classification, the quizzes ask you to identify soils based on images, and while you can get the order, the other part is somewhat of a guess. Maybe some extra documentation explaining that on the classification page, or change the question? Lastly, to focus on the quizzes again, it would be great if there was a way that you could sign in before taking them so that you can get a score at the end of your quiz attempt? Maybe one that includes at least all the multiple-choice components? It wouldn’t be difficult to calculate by oneself but having it done would definitely be an improvement!

All in all, SoilWeb200 is a great resource and I recommend everyone use it, whether or not they’re still in the class!

Jacob Beauregard 57140931



Soil Classification Website

I found the soil classification web is quite useful when we are studying for APBI 200. This website provides video footage on soil identification and classification based on the Canadian soil classification system. Each soil page includes a video that demonstrate the characteristic of the soil. (ten videos in total). For example, in the video, people classified each horizon under the soil, identified the texture, purpose, acidity of the soil, even the environment around this area. I think those videos are quite helpful for me to have a better understanding, a good platform for me to visualize when I am studying. The soil classification web is completely free for everyone, and we can visit anytime for our further application. Especially when midterms/final approaching, reading through the website is a very efficient way for us to learn since this website has been organized for our students. (Jason Huang 38033924)



SoilWeb200 - Review and Reflect

I think SOILWEB200 is a great study aide to go along with the course lecture material. The webpages all really help and fully explain the concepts covered in the lecture. I found it most useful to check the soilweb200 website whenever I was unsure of a concept or wasn't able to make it to lecture. The quizzes on soilweb200 are really good in theory because it allows students to directly test themselves in preparation for exams. The quizzes are definitely not the most optimized for a studying student though. I found it really strange how the answers would show up as a whole new question, and it wasn't always clear which part of the questions that were "Select all the apply" I was getting incorrect. The other main issue I had with the quizzes is that they don't flow very well with how the lecture material is taught. I remember seeing a lot of content from further along in the course while I was studying for the first midterm, which was pretty confusing!! The actual content on the site is very useful for students, and the quizzes would be a lot better with a few minor tweaks.


ANDREW HARTFORD 89755821



Review and Reflect Question 1

The SoilWeb200 is a great source of information in addition to the lecture. It is a go-to for students to catch up on missing information when they missed the class content. However, sometimes I feel even after attending the lecture, when I am reviewing at inconvenient times (ungodly hours in the middle of the night), I find that it does not explain in enough depth. Like for example, if it there was a comparison question of soil in two location and their effect on plant growth, the soil we does a good job of defining the key concepts but what I would be struggling with is how to make the connection to real life scenarios. More so with the units that are more chemistry based, like interactions among soil components, it is harder to conceptualize when it is at the molecular level. It would be nice to link helpful videos or gifs that explains and visualize these concepts, but I understand that there is not a lot of resource out there like biology or math would.



Chelates

I must start by stating that I really value the material presented in SoilWeb200. It is as important (if not more) than the book we currently used for this course, since it is a focused and practical approach on all the topics. I just have a few suggestions for how topics flow: for example the chelate page. By checking it I had little understanding of what a chelate was in practice and how it was formed. I had to consult other sources to then understand that chelates are an important metal stabilization tool for plants. That plants need chelates to prevent metals from reacting with other substances before the chelated metal is dismantled by a plant. Without this information I imagine the concept would be much harder to understand, but practical applications of all the concepts presented in this course could greatly improve interest and content acquisition from students!

Michel Bujnicki Zablith, 83861559



Mind Maps & Summary Pages for SoilWeb200

What aspect of the SoilWeb200 e-textbook could be improved to help you better learn the material covered in APBI 200? Focus on one or two specific units in the SoilWeb200 e-textbook.

I do like how each unit (Soil Components, Soil Biology, etc.) on SoilWeb200 is divided into sub-categories and topics for easy reference, and informative readings. However, I feel like a mind map or an “overview” section for each unit would be extremely helpful for tying all of these concepts together. Similar to how visual nutrient cycles help us to envision all of the inputs, outputs, and transformations of soil nutrients, a visual mind map linking each topic and concept from units would be very beneficial for me. For example, at the end of the Soil Components unit, an overview of the key points in mineral, organic, soil water, and soil air components would be able to depict visually how all of these concepts are interconnected. Overall, SoilWeb200 is a great student resource, but providing mind maps and summary readings for each unit would definitely help me to learn and internalize concepts rather than just memorizing terms and definitions.

Ceilidh Smith



Review and Reflect

Answer to question 2: 

After comparing "Soil Science" articles on Wikipedia and soilweb200 e-textbook, I feel the soilweb200 e-textbook is much more useful to me. The e-textbook on soilweb200 contains many graphs that are extremely useful to illustrate some ideas compared to paragraphs of texts. At the same time, the e-textbook is also more organized. In APBI 200， there are many related pieces of knowledge.  If you use Wikipedia, you need to switch and search many times but the e-textbook does not need these tedious procedures to find the information you need. My suggestion toward the soilweb200 is to add some links to videos of related concepts. Thus, students can get a better understanding of certain concepts.

Student: Yunhao Xu



Review and Reflect

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

If I'm honest, I didn't really use SoilWeb throughout the course as the lecture slides seemed to be sufficient. The site itself has a good setup with user-friendly and organized tabs and the content was easy to follow with helpful pictures and links. However, since the slides were the main resource I was following, I found it difficult to follow SoilWeb simultaneously. Perhaps if the content was organized in the same sequence as the lectures it would be easier - or, if a link was provided on the slides for additional information on a topic in SoilWeb. Furthermore, it would be useful to have a search bar exclusively for the SoilWeb site, as instead of leading to irrelevant links we could easily search for the specific information/topic we're looking for. This would save time rather than searching manually. What I like about SoilWeb, though, is the quizzes and glossary; it's useful as a refresher for terms and definitions.

p.s. I'm really going to miss this course, everyone is so wholesome and passionate about soil :( my friends just make fun of me when I nerd out haha

Katia Leo, 69115376



"Reviw and Reflect on The Soil Organic Matter of The Course"

I am really into the SOM part. However, it is a little bit confusing to me. Since in January, we learned the difference between primary component, secondary component, humin, fulvic acid, humic acid. However, in March, we learned about the exchangeable acidity and how it will influence fulvic acid, humin etc.(For example, Fulvic acid has the highest CEC, highest acidity... ) I found it a little messy, I think it will be easier to learn if everything about SOM can be structure in a way which is tighter.

Speaking of the structure, a similar topic is about the montmorillonite and the Kaolinite.(Same problem as the above topic)

Other than these, I found the class material very nice organized and easy to follow.

Student Name: Becca



"Reviw and Reflect on The Soil Organic Matter of The Course"

I am really into the SOM part. However, it is a little bit confusing to me. Since in January, we learned the difference between primary component, secondary component, humin, fulvic acid, humic acid. However, in March, we learned about the exchangeable acidity and how it will influence fulvic acid, humin etc.(For example, Fulvic acid has the highest CEC, highest acidity... ) I found it a little messy, I think it will be easier to learn if everything about SOM can be structure in a way which is tighter.

Speaking of the structure, a similar topic is about the montmorillonite and the Kaolinite.(Same problem as the above topic)

Other than these, I found the class material very nice organized and easy to follow.

Student Name: Becca



Review and Reflect--Q1

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

Although the SoilWeb200 is a very useful online resource for learning courses that can find the information we want quick and easy. It has a great summarize include knowledge of each topic and provides us with specific examples. When the students do not clearly know about the information of the lecture notes or it does not give enough deep analysis, this is a good website to help us understand that unclear knowledge better. Also, it can help us connect the soil to our real life. In addition, the quiz on SoilWeb200 can help us better grasp the missing key points and effectively review the exam. In fact, this SoilWeb200 can add some videos to help us understand the concepts of abstract paintings, such as about the process of Mineralization and Immobilization. Anyway, SoilWeb200 is a very good site to help us learn APBI200. (Student: XinYue Zhang)



Review and Reflect on SoilWeb200

The SoilWeb 200 e-textbook is resourceful, helpful in clarifying doubts about particular topics and a useful extra learning tool. However, in general, I found the website hard to use as I found it to be a little unaccessible. By that I mean that it was hard for me to find the information I needed. A possible solution to this is an addition of a search tool bar, or the topics to be arranged in order of the lectures so it is easier to find information as the course progresses. It is useful however as it has quizzes and a glossary that defines all the needed important terms in alphabetical order. The information is arranged in topics which is useful when studying the course all together (for example the final) however, in the beginning of the course and for midterms or revision, it is hard to find the needed information as (personally) I don't know which topic it falls under. I think this was the biggest issue for me personally as I found it hard to locate specific information. For example, for one of the labs, I was looking for an explanation on pH buffering capacity and took a long time for me to locate this information as I could not find it under soil acidity (which is where I thought it would be located) and hence had to refer to some other sources.

Student Name: Vinya Nadimpalli



Review and Reflect by Zekun Yu . Student#15344658

Overall, the learning materials in SoilWeb200 e-textbook is good. The statements of articles are clear. But the quiz section still needs some improvements, for example, it will be better to make a quiz history to record students previous answer and students can look back to previous questions while doing the quiz. That’s all.



Review and Reflect - Question 3: Quizlet (Heather Bylsma)

One study tool that I have found particularly useful is an app called “Quizlet”. This app’s study guides can be presented in a variety of study formats such as flash cards, quiz, and match up style practice. On this app I was able to find pre-existing study guides created by former and present APBI 200 students, as well as create my own based on lectures and other provided course material. I have found this app to be an excellent tool for exam review and general practice. Moving forward, a “master study guide” may be helpful additional course material for future APBI 200 students. This study guide could be a compilation of preexisting study guides created by students, or perhaps solely created by the APBI 200 teaching staff and put in the Quizlet app. This study guide could then be used by APBI 200 students when studying or preparing for exams, without questioning the validity of the information provided in the study guide.



Section Quiz Structure - Valentina Moncada

The main suggestion that I have in order to improve learning through SoilWeb200 is to separate the quizzes more. The online quizzes were one of the most helpful resources that I had in this course for exam practice. It helped me have a better understanding of the material and the type of questions that could be asked. Nonetheless, the structure of the quizzes could be better. Maybe by adding a quiz at the end of every section (within a unit) would help internalize whatever was learned from the unit. For example, I find soil chemistry harder than other sections. However, I was able to understand it better by doing the components interactions quiz. Nonetheless, more specialized short quizzes at the end of every section (e.g. within “Interactions Among Soil Components” - 1. Soil Structure) would help with my understanding of the material that made me struggle previously.



SoilWeb 200 headers

In my opinion, the content on SoilWeb200 is helpful and easy to understand. The content serves as a middle point between the lecture slides and the textbook as it offers a bit more detail but not so much like the textbook. The pictures and animations on SoilWeb200 really help with illustrating the content too. I particularly like the Forest Floor SoilWeb as it has a very vibrant design and the videos are very helpful. I don’t really have any complaints against the content of SoilWeb200. However, it would be a lot easier to locate content if the headers on SoilWeb200 match name of the units that we cover in class (soil components, soil physics, soil biology, soil fertility, soil classification). It would also be much easier to locate content if the headers were placed in the same order that we covered the units in class.

Student: Mark Dao



Review & Reflect - answering 1 & 3

The content on the e-textbook SoilWeb200 is easy to understand and each component is nicely summarized. The online quizzes on this website were helpful in preparing for midterm exams. It helped me have a better understanding of the material and the type of questions that I could potentially be tested on. It would be more helpful if the section quizzes were separated further into more specific categories. As much as they are already separated, a few of the section quizzes were quite long and tested on a lot of information like the Soil Components section quiz. In my personal opinion, if the quiz was more broken up into smaller quizzes, it would be easier to retain the information and study. Another study tool that I found useful was Quizlet. I like how it has mini games that make studying more engaged and fun, such as the match game and this game called Gravity.

Student: Emily Mardell



A Review of Nutrient Cycling on the SoilWeb e-Textbook

The SoilWeb e-textbook starts off really strong. I like how thorough the sections are and there are sufficient visuals to make learning and abstract topics relatively easy. I appreciate that the professors went to such lengths to make buying the textbook unnecessary.

However, I think that the nutrient cycle chapters need to have a bit more information. I am lucky in that this is my second degree and I have studied nitrogen and phosphorous cycles in the past. In the SoilWeb e-textbook the previous subheadings are all clearly visible, but for the nutrient cycling you can only see the visuals if you click on the left side panel. I think this should be made more obvious like the previous sections where there are large blue banners at the end of each chapter to introduce the nutrient cycles.

In addition, I would recommend putting more time into reviewing this material. Most of the students that I talked to had a very difficult time with the chemical equations and various N-cycling processes. The e-textbook only has around one sentence for each process. I think this could be expanded and more examples could be given to supplement the information given in class time. If there were more figures describing things like ammonium fixation or volatilization, then the students might pick up on the information faster. For instance, I believe the only image for ammonium fixation is the image used for isomorphic substitution repurposed.

All-in-all the resource I am greatly appreciative for the resource.

Thanks,

Matthew Campbell (27848100)



Review and Reflect, Question 1 (Madeline Woodley)

Overall, I found that the SoilWeb200 online tool was helpful in providing quizzes and questions leading up to exams, however it was not a tool I found useful when trying to answer questions on lab assignments or problem sets. I found that it did not elaborate on concepts and actually gave less information than lecture slides paired with notes. In particular, I found that section 4 of the textbook on soil acidity lacked information on things like cation exchange capacity and base saturation which actually ended up being questions on the exams. The theory aspect is fairly well covered by the SoilWeb200 textbook, however it might be helpful to have some example questions embedded within the text for exam purposes since, while it is a theory and concept-oriented course, some of the more specific questions and calculations are not as thoroughly covered and then do end up showing up on tests and assignments. Since this textbook complements the course material, while it is good to have a review of the general concepts I think it would be a great place to have some worked-examples to help students with the assignments and exam preparation. In truth I found that the lab manual helped me more in this course than the SoilWeb200 textbook did. Also it would helpful to perhaps link students with other verified sources within the textbook that might elaborate more on concepts than the text or lecture slides can.

Student: Madeline Woodley



Review and Reflect question 3 - Quizlet flashcards

Other than the soil200 ebook that was provided to the students. I found that Quizlet is a very beneficial learning tool for me. Quizlet is a study website that provides students to study all kinds of subjects through flashcards, games and quizzes. As an international student, keeping up with all the concepts in class and remembering all of them right before the exams is difficult. However, as I go through the flashcards, I gain a better understanding of the concepts we learned from APBI200. Flashcards also help me memorize fancy vocabulary terms strongly. After I studied with flashcards, I can examine myself via small quizzes on Quizlet. Additionally, Quizlet also produced as an application on mobile, so students can study anytime anywhere.

Student name: Angela Jiang



Review and Reflect

In my opinion, the SoilWeb200 e-textbook has been very helpful to me in previewing/reviewing the materials in the course. However, I think the quiz section could be improved. Instead of having a single quiz for each section at the end, there should be a quiz for every topic in each section in addition so after reading each topic we can use it to refresh memory, then at the end of each section we can do the section quiz. To me that would help me earn a lot better instead of having only 1 section quiz. Another thing I would recommend to be added to the SoilWeb200 e-textbook is that an exam section should be added where questions for midterm 1, midterm 2, and the final are grouped into 3 sections (having past exams would also be very helpful) with answers at the end. This would help us review and prepare for exams better instead of having 2 practice exams on wiki with no answers.

Philip Zheng



Nutrient cycles

I found the soilweb200 e-book to be a very thorough and well-organized resource for studying. If there was one thing to improve I would suggest using more types of media for understanding. For example, on the nutrient cycles page each different cycle has a fairly complicated diagram showing how the cycle works. In this case I personally would find it really helpful to see a video of the cycle rather than the picture. I find the diagrams a bit difficult to follow and know where the cycle is beginning to start with. When I find myself confused with one of the nutrient cycles its really easy for me to find one on youtube with a quick search. Having a video right there on the page could help students who may learn better through audio in addition to visual learning. Oftentimes I find videos make the material less daunting and easier to understand. They often also include real world examples of the nutrient cycles rather than diagrams. I found other videos really helpful in this course, like the ones used for the forest floor lab. It would be nice if there were more included.

Kate Morrison 99739021



APBI 200

The content of APBI is clear, which is helpful to students as a whole. But I hope the chemistry part of APBI book can have more basic knowledge and explanation, so that students can understand better. And for another problem that can be improved is that to provide more practice questions to students. Articles on Wikipedia and e-books are not difficult to understand, both are based on knowledge points in the classroom. In comparison, the contents of the book will be more detailed. I hope Wikipedia can send more reading materials after class. I like to listen to the video to review the knowledge, because a lot of things I didn't understand can be repeated. There is a Youtuber called Pankaj Madwan help me a lot. He will explain some topics on soil science, which is very helpful for understanding the content of APBI 200 class.



Soil Macropores - Science Direct

A source that I reach out often to clarify and reinforce contents seen on soil science class is the ScienceDirect website. This site has a great selection of scientific papers and articles that explore different soil science contents through research and experiments. Reading papers is convenient not only because in the introduction of each study the authors further clarify key topics seen in class, but also, they explain how these topics apply to their research. Therefore, this source illustrates the importance of how the contents seeing in class are relevant to current research, which makes the class further engaging and interesting. For example, when learning about macropores, ScienceDirect provided me different current scientific papers regarding the subject one being by the P.F. Germann. The author's research was specific to macropore flow and even though the paper contains complex topics that are beyond what we see in class, the way the researcher presents the topic was effective for my understanding of macropores. I saw myself reading several research papers from ScienceDirect when doing my laboratory assignments, problem sets and preparation for midterms as they are easily accessible through the UBC library. I highly recommend my classmates and future soil science students to check out this website for further clarification and application of class topics.

Sofia Fernandez 78020872



SoilWeb200 recommendation - David Hanam

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

I think that SoilWeb200 is a very good resource. I like how it has specific information tailored directly for this course. I also find the images and quizzes quite useful. One thing that I think could help SoilWeb200 be a better resource is the organization of the information. I think that the information could be more effective if it was organized in a way that more mirrored how the information is presented in class. Right now, it does do a decent job of this with the headings mostly aligning with the class slides, but I think it could be done better to make it easier to find information. I think that this could be accomplished by putting the information of SoilWeb in the exact order that is presented in class and as well as that, using the same headings hat appear in the class slides to label the sections of SoilWeb. I think doing this will make SoilWeb a seamless resource as a companion to the course and as a stand-alone material. (David Hanam - 45592359)



Soil Science Society of America

A soil science learning resource that I found useful was Soil Science Society of America (soils.org). Although some of the information about soil classification was a but different as the website was American, it was helpful for resources, news and it has some videos that I watched which were quite useful and entertaining. I found their page on soil contaminants really interesting and its information really supplemented the topics that we learned in APBI 200. I also read quite a few of their articles on carbon loss in agriculture and green infrastructure which I found really interesting.



Way I used for learning concept

  • URL:
  • Date:
  • Authors:

To be honest, I think google every concept that confused me is a really useful and convenient way for me to solve the questions. After you search the concept or type in the keywords related to the concept, a list of links will pop up. Then I would go through the list on the first page, and then choose one that is interesting and seems helpful. Spend a few minutes to read the introduction, and you would know whether it's the one you need. For instance, I can't identify the differences between micropores and macropores at the very beginning, except I have some common sense -miro means small and tiny which means it's a type of really tiny soil-pores, and -macro which means very large in scale, so it means big soil-pores. However, this isn't helpful at all. So I open the google window, and import "soil micropores and macropores", and then glance over the links, choose one. These links have several types some in very academic and professional language, so I would choose the one that uses easy sentences to simplify the concept. And I think apbi 200 helps me to take care of my little vegetable garden. Yuhan Chen



Review and reflect, Phyllis Lesnikov

The soil science e-textbook – SoilWeb 200 – was a useful tool throughout my learning in this course. One thing I really liked about the textbook was that it was effectively a concise, summarized version of what we had to learn in class; anytime I didn’t understand the content from lectures, I refered to this resource before I began googling information. I also really like the section quizzes; they’ll be quite useful in studying for the final. However, one thing I found problematic was that the textbook was very inconsistent with how much “extra” detail there was in each section. Some sections, I found that the textbook provided extra learning to go in addition to the lectures that helped broaden my knowledge and understanding, but wasn’t necessarily directly examinable material. An example of such a section was section 1.1; we don’t necessarily need to know the full list of every single primary and secondary mineral that’s listed in this e-textbook, but it’s still useful information to know. Other times, however, I felt that the e-textbook wasn’t detailed enough; an example of such a section was soil biology – instead of actually giving an even more comprehensive list of organisms then what was provided in lecture, or what kind of soil we might find them in, this section provided a more summary of the importance of soil organisms – which I’d more or less already heard. All in all, although I somewhat enjoy this format of information being conveyed, I would suggest more consistency: either have more comprehensive information that acts as an addition to what’s provided in lecture (such as the section on primary and secondary minerals), or have it be a summary (such as the section on soil organisms).

By: Phyllis Lesnikov

Review and Reflect

There is an another recourse that I used during the term, it was a website which provide a great deal of descriptions for the soil formation and soil classification, those informations were very useful when I study APBI200. For soil formation, this web shows a series of picture which explained some of things I had been think of. For instance, Simonson proposed the soil formation could be divide in two major step which are the accumulation of the parent material and the differentiation of the horizons within the soil profile by soil formation process. Also, there are some brief descriptions help me to better understand the concept of soil factors. In the part of soil classification, it gives me an excellent example of grassland soil especially when I was thinking about my lab assignment. In addition, this website also described the four main soil orders for forested landscape throughout Canada, there are Organic, Luvisolic, Brunisolic, and Podzolic. Therefor, I consider this website broadens my horizons and help me a lot. Junjie Zhang 86681301



Q1: I keep encountering the following sequence of events: I go through the lecture slides and my in-class notes to check my understanding of the material. I encounter a concept that makes me go "Huh?", so I go to Soil Web 200 to learn more. Inevitably, Soil Web 200 has nothing to say about the subject, so I turn to some combination of the Discussion forum, Youtube videos, or Wikipedia to find my answers. The problem, I find, is that Soil Web 200 doesn't yet cover the material of the course in as much detail as the lecture slides, so its utility as a supplementary resource is limited. For example, I'm going back over nutrient cycles right now. I want to learn more about wet and dry atmospheric deposition of sulfur, but Soilweb has nothing to say on the subject. Again relating to nutrient cycles, I also want to know how non-exchangable potassium enters back into soil solution. The K cycle diagram has an arrow indicating that non-exchangeable K can enter directly back into soil solution, but the page doesn't say anything more about how this happens, so now I'm googling around in search of answers.

What I don't like about Soilweb: - Lack of detailed information relative to other course materials (lectures, textbook) - Search function gives results from outside sources rather than just from Soilweb

What I like: - The quizzes are a fabulous review tool



Review and Reflect

  • URL:
  • Date: Current
  • Authors: UBC Soil Science

Personally, I feel that I benefitted the most when studying for APBI midterms and assignments when I read and studied from the Lab Manual. It was of course, very helpful during the lab assignments, but I felt that the information summarized and presented in the lab manual was relevant to learning in preparation for the midterms as well. For the SoilWeb200 page, I found the online quizzes the most helpful for increasing my confidence ahead of exams. I think to make the information more accessible, having information laid out in charts for comparison would be more helpful and make things easier to remember.

Jessie See-Fernandez 16464349



Review and Reflect (Spencer Shields)

Q1: I keep encountering the following sequence of events: I go through the lecture slides and my in-class notes to check my understanding of the material. I encounter a concept that makes me go "Huh?", so I go to Soil Web 200 to learn more. Inevitably, Soil Web 200 has nothing to say about the subject, so I turn to some combination of the Discussion forum, Youtube videos, or Wikipedia to find my answers. The problem, I find, is that Soil Web 200 doesn't yet cover the material of the course in as much detail as the lecture slides, so its utility as a supplementary resource is limited. For example, I'm going back over nutrient cycles right now. I want to learn more about wet and dry atmospheric deposition of sulfur, but Soilweb has nothing to say on the subject. Again relating to nutrient cycles, I also want to know how non-exchangable potassium enters back into soil solution. The K cycle diagram has an arrow indicating that non-exchangeable K can enter directly back into soil solution, but the page doesn't say anything more about how this happens, so now I'm googling around in search of answers.

What I don't like about Soilweb: - Lack of detailed information relative to other course materials (lectures, textbook) - Search function gives results from outside sources rather than just from Soilweb

What I like: - The quizzes are a fabulous review tool



SoilWeb200

I found the webpage SoilWeb200 to be very useful in supporting my understanding of the material of the course. However, there are some aspects of the page that could be improved. One of them is that it would be useful for the quiz section’s interface to be updated, as this could make it easier to navigate it. Some of the questions should also be revised since sometimes they don’t give you the right answer so I still have doubts after taking the quiz. Moreover, it would be useful to have more in-depth material about soil physics, and to add separate sections on soil chemistry and soil physics to make it easier to navigate the wiki. Aside from these aspects, I found the page to be a great tool overall and to have a great organization.



Soil Monolith- Question 3

I found the Soil Monoliths website that was used in the final lab to be very helpful. I really enjoyed being able to click on the pictures and zoom in, especially because the high quality of the photographs allowed you to really discern the distinctions between the layers. I really appreciated the level of detail as well. I had no idea that there were so many different distinctions within the soil orders themselves, so this was a really insightful resource to delve deeper into the types of soil that we may encounter in our work. It was a bit confusing that the images has the wrong Parent Material on them and perhaps in the future this part of the image could be cropped to avoid confusion. I also appreciated the practice questions as they allowed you to have a greater understanding of the material. The hyperlinks within the page were helpful, as was the separate link to check your answers which made it a useful and meaningful learning tool to assess progress and comprehension.



The SoilWeb200 is a reliable resource that I have used during this semester. I find it useful because it is easy to revise any key points in the lecture notes, it provides an easy way of learning some course concepts that were difficult to remember and actually understand it. The e-textbook material is useful for exam preperation, it has answers to quizzes. Comparing the e-textbook with Wikipedia, e-textbook is easier for me to understand. The word used in Wikipedia is more formal and scientific, and contains less photos to explain.



Review (Jason Li)

The SoilWeb200 is a reliable resource that I have used during this semester. I find it useful because it is easy to revise any key points in the lecture notes, it provides an easy way of learning some course concepts that were difficult to remember and actually understand it. The e-textbook material is useful for exam preperation, it has answers to quizzes. Comparing the e-textbook with Wikipedia, e-textbook is easier for me to understand. The word used in Wikipedia is more formal and scientific, and contains less photos to explain.



Review and Reflection

SoilWeb200 e-textbook has helped me at certain level during the term which provided me with the introduction and explanation of the concepts that I learnt in APBI200. My suggestion is that it would be better if the web could have a search engine which could be more efficient in studying. By comparing the article on Wikipedia and SoilWeb e-textbook, the concepts on both of them are easy to understand. If the Wikipedia could have more connections with the materials that we studied in APBI200, it would be very efficient and effective. Some soil science resources on the YouTube is also very useful and helpful for me to learn APBI200.



SOIL ORGANIC MATTER

Answer to Question 1: There are already sufficient images attached to the descriptions in the SoilWeb200 e-textbook which makes it very convenient for students to refer to while studying. However, it'd be more idealistic to also include index to these pictures so the students can look them up while studying related materials and it would also be helpful if the images were somewhat gathered according to the materials so they can be contrasted at a glance.



Jenni You

Expand on Information in Some Units

I think soilweb200 is accessible and gives a brief preview of the content based on each individual component of each unit. However, I feel that as an e-textbook it could better expand on the content giving us more information, especially because many students were unable to access a recommended textbook for this class. This can be seen in the Component Interactions Unit, as the subunit Chelates only has some definitions and bullet points. This is beneficial as a review, but it would also be good to give us some more information that will allow us to draw the connections ourselves but also provide us with guidance, as right now it is not as useful as an actual textbook. In this section specifically, the website mentions humic substances, but not much can be taken from the information. Instead it would be more advantageous to students to add details about fulvic acid, humin and humic acid, to better understand the information, as the textbook doesn’t provide much information about it and neither does doing external research online. I think, topics that aren’t found in the textbook or externally should be more emphasized in the e-textbook so that students have a place where they can receive the information that would help them better understand the content. However, this is quite infrequent, as most of the units in soilweb200 are details and clearly give details about the content. Overall, I think adding information to units of soilweb200 that lack detail may be beneficial.

Sneha Gupta



Retrieved from "https://wiki.ubc.ca/index.php?title=Course:APBI200/Review_and_Reflect&oldid=593822"