Experiencs Of Extension Education Via Online Delivery Of Programming Related To Precision Agriculture Technologies
This paper will describe the content and experiences teaching an extension education course on precision agriculture technologies via online delivery.
The course was developed to be delivered in 16 weeks meeting one time a week online. There was also a one-day face-to-face hands-on session focused around 4 lab type activities related to GPS guidance, diagnosis, and setup and maximizing the usefulness of precision agriculture technologies.
This course focuses on agricultural equipment that is commonly used in conjunction with GPS technology. Planters, combines, fertilizer application equipment and sprayer application equipment are commonly equipped with GPS equipment to control and record operational parameters. These parameters focus around the equipments geographic location and can be recorded simultaneously with the volume of product applied and weather information (wind, temperature, humidity, etc.). GPS guidance is one of the main technologies to be studied throughout the course.
The management of this equipment and the GPS technologies used to control and record this information is the focus of the course. Items to be discussed are hurdles in teaching precision agriculture technologies online. Feedback from course participates on how the course could be improved as well as what was liked the most about the method of online delivery.