Building Interactive Graphic Simulations to Help Students Understand Nitrogen Transformations in the Soil

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Chen, X., Cotton, D., Roeber, R. & Guru, A. (2004). Building Interactive Graphic Simulations to Help Students Understand Nitrogen Transformations in the Soil. In L. Cantoni & C. McLoughlin (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2004 (pp. 1280-1284). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/12637.

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Conference Information

World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (EDMEDIA) 2004
Lugano, Switzerland
2004
ISBN 1-880094-53-3
  Lorenzo Cantoni & Catherine McLoughlin
AACE

More Information on EDMEDIA
Table of Contents

Authors

Xingchun Chen, Dan Cotton, Ron Roeber, Ashu Guru, Unitversity of Nebraska, United States

Abstract

Nitrogen is one of the most important macronutrients essential to the growth of plants. In soil-plant-microbial system, it undergoes a series of chemical and biological transformations which regulates its availability to plants and also generates health and environmental concerns. Better understanding of how biological activities and environmental factors regulate soil nitrogen transformations is essential to guide farming practices for better plant production and environmental quality. This paper demonstrates how we use Java, Perl and XML to re-engineer a long standing empirical model (NCSOIL) into an interactive, Internet-based system. The system enables users to graphically simulate soil N transformations regulated by common farming practices and environmental factors. The University of Nebraska used the system to teach a Soil Resources class in the fall 2003. Evaluations indicate it helps teachers better explain and students better understand related concepts. This paper includes the student evaluation results based on its usage in classrooms.

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