Jumble judging: Cognitive and affective outcomes of intercollegiate collaboration at a soil judging competition

Abstract

Student-student interactions are influential parts of field experiences. While competitive judging events are a fun way to engage students in field-based learning, the focus on competition leads to an atmosphere that discourages collaboration between students. The objective of this study was to evaluate the cognitive and affectiveThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Assessing Student and Coach Learning Experiences with Virtual Collegiate Soil Judging Contest during COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Studies have documented several benefits of hands-on and co-operative learning activities like soil judging contests. For example, soil judging contests motivate a student's learning process by working independently and collaboratively as a team with other students, promote student engagement due to coach-student interactions, and help explore, describe, and interpret soils in their in-situ state [2,5,6]. Rees & Johnson [4] (2020) reported that in-person soil judging contests help students understand locationspecific soils and develop positive attitudes toward soil science.…”

“…Further, the team judging part of the soil judging contest and the opportunity to interact with other students and coaches from different universities can create a co-operative learning environment, which can help students to learn, and problem solve in real-time through working with their peers, improve their communication skills, and prepare students to work as a team member [8]. In essence, soil judging contests allow students to learn about various soil types in a given region and interact with students and peers from their university and other participating schools [3,5,6]. The framework of the SSSA-ASA regional and national contests is the same, but the format of individual soil judging contests may differ.…”

“…He reported that 96% of the students expressed their desire to continue group judging, which has become one of the most popular sections students enjoy in current competition formats. The authors of [6] indicated that soil judging concepts should be modified to expose students and teach observational, descriptive, and critical thinking skills to apply their learning to real-world experiences. Likewise, [6] reported that 70% of the participant students agreed or strongly agreed to make jumble judging (students were randomly assigned to teams containing members from different universities) a part of future contests, and 54% of students cited jumble judging among the best parts of the contest.…”

“…The authors of [6] indicated that soil judging concepts should be modified to expose students and teach observational, descriptive, and critical thinking skills to apply their learning to real-world experiences. Likewise, [6] reported that 70% of the participant students agreed or strongly agreed to make jumble judging (students were randomly assigned to teams containing members from different universities) a part of future contests, and 54% of students cited jumble judging among the best parts of the contest. Major challenges of virtual learning can be the inability to conduct traditional laboratory exercises and field trips, low student engagement, and less instructor interaction [11,12].…”