Digital photography creates a virtual record of plant phenology for teaching.

摘要

The growing season for many horticultural crops does not correspond with the academic year. This may complicate teaching in the horticultural sciences. Students may not have the opportunity to observe a plant's life cycle in time context. We propose to enhance learning by enabling students to have access to detailed visual records of plant phenology in order to further their understanding of growth stages and plant development. We have prepared a detailed digital photographic data bank of fruit, vegetable and floricultural crops. In order to establish the data bank students grew examples of agriculturally-important plants at the Horticultural Research Centre and in the greenhouses of McGill University (Quebec, Canada). Weekly photographs were taken of each plant from seed to harvest. Over 4500 digital images were recorded and stored on a CD-ROM. The digital photos have been catalogued by species, plant family and date. This will allow students to make comparisons between the developmental physiology of related species. Through a user's survey and analysis of website usage patterns, relationships between image use and learning were observed. There was a positive correlation between students' use of a PowerPoint slide show on poinsettia development and the grades they received on a written exam. We also anticipate using the photos to enhance decision case based learning related to horticultural production practices.