Allison B. Wallace describes a seminar in organic horticulture she created and teaches as part of an honors curriculum. She answers the question of how gardening is appropriate for high-ability college students by saying that she believes efforts to raise plants by relatively non violent means teaches and disciplines students in an ethical way to…

Experiential learning is invaluable when promoting interdisciplinary approaches to teaching complex issues. This article reports on a five-week collaboration between undergraduate students in social work and landscape architecture courses, project impetus being a common-reading text. Students (n=54) constructed three-dimensional models of…

Engaging local actors in Environmental Education activities seems to be an important condition for environmental sustainability. Lack of common purpose among local and external researchers constrains the engagement. Following these insights, we implemented a participatory action research project related to tree planting as part of creating an…

The fundamental concepts employed by City as Text™ (CAT)--the established experiential learning practice in honors education-and the discipline of geography, specifically the landscape tradition within human geography, share much in common. The overlaps offer CAT practitioners additional intellectual support from a source outside of honors while…

We report and reflect on three projects, carried out by us as educators and technology researchers over a four year period, that explore the use of mobile technologies in the fieldwork of Australian tertiary students of architectural history, landscape history and urban design. Treating these as three case studies, our focus is on the emerging…

Since 1995, soil-ecological field courses across climatic zones in West Siberia have been organized by scientists from Russia and Germany to meet growing demands for better land use practices. They are focused on virgin landscapes and soils undisturbed by anthropogenic influences to facilitate the learning processes by excluding concealing changes…

Written scientific communication, such as laboratory reports, are important components of undergraduate education within the sciences. Since most Horticultural Science majors offer lecture- and lab-based courses, students often write laboratory reports for many courses across the curriculum and these reports comprise a large percentage of the…

This article provides a brief overview of the March 2014 workshop that the authors organized with approximately thirty pre-and in-service teachers from around the state of Virginia. The authors' broad focus in this workshop was the connection between race and the cultural landscape in Virginia. The goals were relatively simple: to get teachers and…

Many scholars and practitioners have asserted the value of opportunities for young children to participate in projects that inspire positive civic engagement. A National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Position statement stresses civic engagement as an important focus for powerful and purposeful learning in elementary social studies. The…

Peer review is not included in undergraduate horticultural curricula. Our research objectives in an 8- year study, which ranged from 2000 to 2007 in two sections (2000-2002 non-peer reviewed and 2003-2007 peer-reviewed) of Greenhouse Management students at the University of Minnesota were to determine whether iterative peer reviews would result in…

High in the hills south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, stands a greenhouse that Luke Reed hopes will help American Indians eat healthier. Reed also recently used the structure, completed in August, to teach a course on greenhouse management to representatives of the nearby Santo Domingo, Cochiti and Santa Clara pueblos. Near the greenhouse, fruit trees…

Purpose: Problem-based learning (PBL), a relatively novel teaching and learning process in horticulture, was investigated. Proper application of PBL can potentially create a learning context that enhances student learning. Design/Methodology/Approach: Students worked on two complex ill-structured problems: (1) to produce fresh baby greens for a…

Interdisciplinary design education is becoming more important as design disciplines need various perspectives and solutions. However, only a limited amount of research has been done in regard to interdisciplinary design education. The goal of this study is to begin to answer the question about how designers and researchers develop and improve…

Smart phone applications are rapidly gaining popularity, and Extension programs are eager to use this teaching tool. But developing an application can be time intensive and costly. Students in environmental horticulture at the University of Florida teamed with the Florida-Friendly Landscaping™ program to develop an application with an extensive…

The STEM team at the University of Worcester support STEM activities in schools in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Part of this help includes suggesting activities for STEM clubs. As the biologist on the team author, Sue Howarth was asked by teachers for ideas to use in biology clubs. This article was prompted by feedback that these ideas might…