A new course is being offered in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences and Landscape Architecture curriculum called "Water and Nutrient Management Planning for the Nursery and Greenhouse Industry" [http://www.courses.umd.edu/public/HORT400]. This course was developed as a certification course to meet the requirements of the Maryland Water Quality Act of 1998 [http://www.agnr.umd.edu/users/nutrient/nursery]. So, what's so different about this course? This course was developed and is being delivered as a fully online course.

The Maryland Department of Agriculture asked an interdisciplinary team from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources to create a training program to prepare industry professionals to be certified to write nutrient management plans. This team included Dr. John Lea-Cox, Drs. David Ross and Paul Schreuders from the Department of Bioresource Engineering, K. Marc Teffeau, Regional Extension Specialist from the Wye Research and Education Center, and Ellen Varley from AGNR Distance and Continued Learning. According to Dr. Lea-Cox, the primary objectives of the program are to provide the information and skills needed to write a nutrient management plan and "to synthesize the information into tangible recommendations and plans for growers."

At approximately the same time the AGNR team was asked to develop this course, the first Web Initiative in Teaching (WIT) program being offered by the University System of Maryland was soliciting proposals for web-based course collaborations between interdisciplinary teams [http://www.umuc.edu/ide/wit/content/program.html]. While the course as mandated by the state could have been taught in a traditional classroom environment, the AGNR team saw an opportunity to better meet the instructional needs of their targeted audience of professionals by creating an online course within the WebCT environment.

With the support of WIT and a CTE instructional improvement grant, the content collaborators spent nearly a year developing the course. The challenge for the team was developing in an online environment to teach in an online environment - an instructional environment with which neither they nor their primary target audience had much experience. The learning curve for transferring content into web-readable documents and for employing the pedagogical tools made available within WebCT was steep. Dr. Lea-Cox credits Ms. Varley for keeping the team focused on its goal of the "anytime, anyplace instruction" made possible with a delivery mechanism like WebCT.

The course has been taught twice already and is in its third offering this semester. Participants in the class are grouped into three-member teams comprised of a nursery or greenhouse professional or consultant, an extension member, and a resident student. Each team member brings needed skills and experiences to the collaborative process, with the students being strongly relied upon for their technical expertise. Course registrants learn about the legislation and acquire risk assessment skills. Then, through a series of four modules detailing soils and substrates, irrigation, fertility and fertilization, and surface water management, they apply the risk assessment skills to developing a risk management plan. Ultimately, the team produces a nutrient management plan, using the team professional's nursery as the case study.

Developing a fully online course for the first time was not an easy undertaking. Several lessons were learned along the way as the team developed the material and offered it "live" to online students. In its first offering, the course made use of "chat rooms" for facilitating collaboration between team members and between teams and the instructors. Many participants were experiencing issues with levels of connection speed with their individual modems, which diminished the use of chat in last Fall's offering of the course. Additionally, the first time out, course participants never met each other or the instructors face-to-face. All interactions, including those of orienting students to the WebCT course environment, were handled online. Due to the various levels of computer competency of the students, many of them experienced frustrations and challenges.

In the second offering of the course, participants attended a mandatory one-day orientation session in which they met the instructors and the members of their team, and in which they learned how to use WebCT tools and how to prepare their own desktop computer to connect to the WebCT course site. This interaction cut down on start-up problems significantly. Students were quickly able to attend to course content and collaborative assignments without the technology getting in the way. Lea-Cox says wryly, "We initially hoped that WebCT would make the technology transparent [to our students]...but we're not there...yet."

Lea-Cox believes the effort of developing this course "has taught me how to be a better teacher." Despite some of its limitations, Lea-Cox attributes changes in his approach to teaching (or preparing to teach) to WebCT. When preparing to teach a course in which you might never see your students, in which most communication will be done asynchronously in an electronic environment, it becomes necessary to "set the scene for learning." This includes setting clear expectations for how learners and instructors will interact in the online environment and creating objectives for each content module that clearly forward the overall course objectives. Lea-Cox admits that, coming from a research background, his earlier approach to teaching was more ad hoc. He notes that WebCT's attention to structuring content in modules whose interrelationships are clearly identifiable helped him and his team to think through the instructional process, with refinements provided via feedback from course participants themselves. [http://www.courses.umd.edu/public/HORT400/outline2.gif]

The course has evolved since its inception, as content developers have become more technology savvy and as the appropriate role that technology should play within the delivery of the course has become clearer. Lea-Cox admits that the collaborative team did not fully realize how daunting the task would be when they submitted their proposal to the WIT program. The CTE instructional improvement grant enabled them to hire some technically proficient students to handle some of the technical minutia, enabling the instructional team to concentrate its efforts on developing content. That, in addition to training and instructional design assistance available from the OIT Technology Enhanced Learning group, enabled the group to succeed in developing a fully online course.

Many positive outcomes have resulted from completion of the course. Resident students earn credit and certification, extension members and industry professionals become certified to write other nutrient management plans, and the industry professionals have a completed nutrient management plan for their own nursery or greenhouse, enabling them to comply with the requirements of the Maryland Water Quality Act. Additionally, says Lea-Cox, the students, particularly the industry professionals, feel empowered by their mastery of the technology. For many, prior to the course, technical proficiency was limited to manipulating a spreadsheet or writing a report. Within the context of the course, participants communicate via bulletin boards and chat rooms, transfer files between the course environment and their own desktop, and manipulate the defaults settings of their web browser. Building technical confidence was a serendipitous side-effect of delivering the course online.

HORT400 is being offered in its third iteration for ten weeks this semester. Among the 26 participants are three professionals from Ontario, Canada. Ontario is in the process of writing nutrient management regulations similar to those of Maryland. Lea-Cox indicates that the course is poised to become a national model for cooperative extension distance education and has the potential to support educating similar audiences in other states as nutrient management becomes a national issue.

In view of this national recognition, would he and the team go through the effort again? Lea-Cox provides a qualified "yes." There is a "cost in terms of time and energy" when creating a course in an online learning environment, he says. To offset that cost, Lea-Cox believes the university should increase the incentives for faculty who trod new paths. He also found the instructional technology support provided to be of high quality, but indicates that there needs to be more readily available help by instructional designers, enhanced pedagogical workshops, and trained student assistants to help with the technical development. It is obvious that "technology enables educational institutions to reach audiences in a time and place convenient to them." But, this ease of access brings with it a need for more support. One avenue that is helping HORT400 in the area of support is the integration of students from the first and second offerings who are returning as online mentors for the current semester.

The course has also received several awards recognizing its excellence in content process and delivery. Among the accolades of which Lea-Cox is most proud are the Epsilon Sigma Phi Distinguished Team Award at both the State and Regional levels, and the Agricultural Communicators in Education Gold Award in Distance Education and Instructional Design.

OIT is proud of the support we were able to provide to the interdisciplinary team developing this course online. With enhanced funding from the university, OIT is attempting to add additional instructional designers and expand the support for these kinds of development efforts.

Open a New Window to Rate This Article