Virtual Nursery Field Trip (VNFT) Use by Horticulture Instructors in Nursery Production and Related Courses

Teaching nursery production requires not only classroom lectures or hands on lab exercises but also viewing actual production systems and operations. Funding, logistics, and geography often limit the scope of field trips available to students in nursery production courses. The Virtual Nursery Field Trip (VNFT) was developed to supplement in-class and field trip portions of a nursery production course.  Digital HD video footage was captured at 42 nursery locations in 22 states.  Videos were arranged by topic for a total of nine “chapters”.  Individual video segments range from a few seconds to several minutes. Videos were compiled onto a single USB drive containing 444 individual videos (total time about 10.75 hours) and 28 company profiles for a finished project size of 29 GB.  USB drives containing videos and company profiles were provided free of charge in Spring 2013 to instructors of Horticulture at land grant institutions (1862, 1890, and 1994) who submitted a request form. Educators receiving the videos were surveyed in Spring 2014 to determine the effectiveness of VNFT.  Of those completing the survey (55) 34 indicated they used the VNFT in nursery production or other courses.  Of those using the VNFT, 82% indicated that the VNFT objective of supplementing in-class and field trip portions of nursery production course was achieved.  Approximately 220 students had viewed videos by the completion of the survey.  Of those instructors who used the VNFT, 56% indicated that the videos were much better than other horticulture educational videos.  Almost all instructors who used the VNFT (97%) indicated they plan to use VNFT in the future.  When asked to evaluate quality, organization, thoroughness, and ease of use, 80-90% of users rated the VNFT videos highly.  If videos were made available online, instructors indicated they would be “very likely” (61%) or “somewhat likely” (24%) to access them online.  Videos are now available to educators online at http://vnft.ag.auburn.edu.