Purdue Ag e-Learning starting again
A week from Wednesday (June 22, 2016) Purdue University will again offer its award-winning Agronomy e-Learning 12-week courses. Agronomy Essentials was the first course offered a year and a half ago, according to Bruce Erickson, the director and lead instructor.
“That’s been well received and we’ve had a few hundred students go through that already,” he told HAT. “That’s a basic agronomy course typically for those who are not practicing agronomists but more for beginners to get a basic introduction in agronomy. Then our second course that we built and launched just this past January is Precision Agriculture. That course goes through a number of topics including global positioning systems, differential correction, geographic information systems, guidance, yield monitoring, data collection and analysis.
Erickson explains these courses are designed for the working agricultural professional seeking to expand his or her expertise.
“If you’re working a fulltime position we also know that you may have a spouse and kids and other responsibilities and you just can’t drop everything and go to a meeting all the time. Nor could you go to a university on a regular basis and take a class, and so our e-Learning classes are setup with high definition recorded videos that you go to on your own time. You view the videos. You read the accompanying material. There are links to additional information, and then after every module you take a test. This ensures that you understand the information.”
Erickson added that if you don’t pass the test you “go back and re-learn and try to take the test again.”
The third course in the certificate program is Nutrient Management, targeted to debut in January 2017. The course will delve more deeply into nutrient cycles and reactions in the soil, plant nutrition, nutrient assessment, soil chemistry and microbiology, and the various nutrient effects and applications.
Participants who complete three online courses will be recognized as a crop professional, with a framed program certificate. Each 12-week course expands the knowledge of participants in areas of agronomy that are relevant in today’s agriculture.
The next sessions start June 22. Course preview videos and a link to registration are available at https://tinyurl.com/purdueagry.
For more information, contact Erickson at berickso@purdue.edu or project manager Janine Black at janblack@purdue.edu.