The Team Project is a major component of this course and your final grade. Each Team will consist of three to four students (at least three, but no more than four). The Project will be designed by the Team and oriented around an area of interest to the students comprising the Team. Project topics must be related to the subject matter of the course, but you have wide latitude in selecting an idea for your Project as long as you can justify a legitimate relationship to "Plant Nutrients in the Environment".

Projects will investigate a specific nutrient management problem or issue at a specific geographical location (or several contrasting locations). You will collect soil samples from your site(s) and analyze these samples in the laboratory portion of the class. Laboratory exercises are limited in scope, so most projects will have to supplement these analyses with information from other sources. You will also need to gather other relevant information about the site, such as describing physical characteristics like soil type, topography, proximity to bodies of water, etc. Projects can focus on crop or livestock production issues, problems in urban landscapes, or environmental concerns, but to some extent should blend both commercial and environmental aspects. For example, a crop nutrient management plan should consider environmental consequences, and an environmentally focused project should consider the economic consequences to agriculture.

Successful individual projects will have clear, specific objectives. These Team Projects are not just reports, but should be designed to answer a question or set of questions. They also may demonstrate a process or contrast dissimilar soil environments, but formulating the goals of a project into simple, specific questions is a good way to help refine your objectives. Key words like "compare, determine, evaluate, contrast, demonstrate, etc.", are often associated with clear and concise objectives. The list below of example topics from previous years shows how these key words can be used in project titles to help express project goals.

The Team Project exercise also has a number of overall course objectives, which include: 1) enabling students to put a major portion of their time and effort into an area where they personally want to know more, 2) giving students experience working on a project in a team atmosphere, which is the way many tasks are organized in today’s workplace, 3) permitting students to select a specific, real-life situation and apply academic information in a meaningful way, 4) providing an opportunity for students to learn from each other when they present the results of their work, 5) offering students a chance to give and receive peer feedback and evaluation on their projects, and 6) supplying the instructor with information on topics and themes that are relevant to students and should be considered for inclusion in the course.

Soil testing is an integral part of nutrient management for both crop production and environmental purposes, so projects will include soil test results as an important part of their investigations and a key basis for their evaluation and conclusions. Five required laboratory exercises will be conducted as part of this class: Standardization of Acids and Bases, Cation Exchange Capacity, Soil pH and Lime Requirement, Organic Matter, and Soil Test Phosphorus and Soluble Salts.

Most projects will probably do some sort of comparative evaluation and require analysis of multiple soil samples. However, design your project for at most six separate samples, which is a realistic number of samples to be analyzed in the time allotted for the lab. Team members are responsible for collecting and preparing their samples. A pint to a quart of soil per sample is adequate. You must collect your samples and have them dry and ready for preparation and analysis by the first laboratory period during week four (Thursday, September 27).

Many projects will require additional analyses not offered in class labs. For example, a biosolids (sewage sludge) project may need information on metal contaminants. In some cases, Teams will have access to actual soil test results from a specific farm, golf course, environmental monitoring site, or other location (or a biosolids, manure, plant, water, or similar analysis). In other cases, representative and realistic laboratory values for the topic and type of location a Team is studying can be found in the process of their research or with the assistance of the instructor. For some projects, it also may be suitable to investigate the effects of a range of soil test values and the management consequences for different nutrient levels in that range.

Selecting a topic and getting started is often one of the hardest parts of a project. A good place to start is to remind yourself why you decided to take this class. What do you hope to learn? How will this information help you in the future? What problems or issues do you expect to apply this information to? Are there specific things that are important to you, but may only be covered in a general way in class? Answering one or more of these questions can help you identify a topic, as well as people with similar interests who will make a good Team.

Questions regarding plant nutrients in the environment are most frequently associated with testing soils to make nutrient management recommendations for crops or to monitor/assess/remediate environmental concerns about nutrient losses and potential water quality degradation. Team Projects can investigate either of these two broad categories, but must be narrow enough in scope to be manageable. At the completion of the project, each Team has to make interpretations and draw conclusions about the information they have gathered, so be careful about losing your focus and investigating questions that are too broad.

Scanning the textbook table of contents, the outline of lecture topics, and the discussion topics and web resources can help generate specific ideas for suitable Project topics. Some project titles from recent years include:

Some additional general project ideas could be:

The Team Project accounts for one-third of the total course grade. Approximately one-half of the points are for an oral presentation and written report at the end of the semester. Most of the other one-half of the total points are associated with activities and deadlines during the semester. Note that about one-third of the total points are determined by your fellow students, including an evaluation of your contributions to the project by your Team partners.

Preliminary and final project proposals should define the problem, question, or issue you will investigate, describe your objectives and methods of accomplishing your goals, and explain how you will evaluate results and reach your conclusions. In other words, tell why your topic is important, what you are going to do, and how you are going to do it. The final presentation and report should include the same information, as well as the actual outcomes and conclusions of your analysis and interpretation.

The timeline and point distribution for the Team Project is as follows (see the course syllabus for the lab schedule):

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