e-Resources for enhancing effectiveness of teaching for postgraduatestudents of agricultural sciences

Abstract

Agriculture education has moved from mere graduating students to producing farmers, scientists, entrepreneurs,employers and every possible essential service provider. The combination of more than 20 different subjects in making themost sought education program in the world is migrating towards a new method of educating students. Albeit agriculturaleducation in traditional classroom teaching had been shaping students with desired knowledge and expertise, current generationliving in the information technology era demands more effective and advanced methods of learning. The engagement of e-resources for teaching Post Graduate students of Plant Pathology was studied to know their understanding of a subject,improvement in perseverance of the subject, knowledge, skill and incitation of innovativeness, creativity and other desiredchanges among the students. E-resources such as videos, 3D videos, live shows, virtual flow charts, life cycles, photos,illustration diagrams, and website documents were used in teaching through a computer on a projector with sound effects. Thecomparison between regular teaching methods and e-resources had impressive and most desired outcomes among the students.Although, many changes observed were qualitative they could make a high impact among the students and were visible in theirperformance during examinations. The Plant Pathology subject depends much upon detection and diagnosis of pathogens alongwith understanding their epidemiology. Engagement of e-resources could help in convincing students much about the subjectthey are learning with a virtual experience of handling the objects especially in absence of facility at the laboratory or classroomat the time teaching, these e-resources could step in easily for creating impressive and positiveenthusiasm among students.Those with difficulty in expressing their knowledge about the subject learned had the better narration of it. Videos, graphs andprocess charts could convince them about the subject effectively. Their skill and expertise also improved especially onknowledge and experience of disease diagnosis and deriving conclusions. Engagement of e-resources was found to improve thequality of teaching and saved more time costing for interaction and discussion. Along with conventional classroom method,integration of e-resources were found much coherent