Template:APBI 200

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