Tips and tricks for teaching horticulture online

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced educators to transition their courses to online delivery. In a matter of weeks, many horticulture courses became reliant on video conferencing software.

Although these products are effective in supporting lecture-based courses, they are not ideal tools to facilitate active learning, especially the hands-on activities, laboratories, and field trips that strengthen horticulture education. Fortunately, active learning in online courses was not new to many horticulture instructors and they quickly adapted to incorporate creative active learning tools.

During the 2021 American Society for Horticultural Science Annual Conference, the Teaching Methods Professional Interest Group hosted the workshop “Going Beyond Zoom: Tips and Tricks for Teaching Horticulture Online.”

This workshop provided a forum for the dissemination of tools, materials, and approaches used to facilitate active learning in horticulture courses. The topics presented in the workshop are valuable resources for current and future horticulture instruction. The details have been published in HortTechnology.