Nelson Academy of Agricultural Sciences Online offers a variety of agriculture courses for middle school, high school, and adult learners. All the classes are conducted asynchronously online using the Buzz Learning System, through the North Dakota Center for Distance Education. I reviewed two of the high school Agriculture courses—Greenhouse Technology I and Farm Business Management: Financial Planning. Both courses run for 20 weeks (one semester) and cost $299 each. Both are recommended for ninth graders to adults.

The Farm Business Management: Financial Planning course has 15 units, starting with the basics of business planning and budgeting, before moving on to farm business operating budgets, making and using cash flow and partial budgets; understanding farm business; selecting a farm record system; balance sheets, cash flow and income statements; and finally ending with a unit on measuring financial strength and progress.

The Greenhouse Technology I course has 16 units and tackles topics such as: greenhouse options; growing medium options, and pH management; greenhouse plant nutrition and application; irrigation and water quality; regulating growth; and dealing pests and diseases.  This course also requires a Greenhouse Project submitted at the end of the semester—come up with a feasible plan for a commercial greenhouse following the assignment parameters.

Lessons and tests for both courses can be accessed through the Buzz online learning platform. You will also need to create a Pathbrite account (it’s free) to create online portfolios.  After going through each unit in the course, you are required to create a unit portfolio to highlight what you have just learned. You will also need to create a major portfolio for your Supervised Agriculture Experience (SAE) project, which is due at the end of the semester, and comprises 10% of your grade. Your course teacher will need to approve your SAE project at the start of the semester.

You need to work through the course units in order. You will not be allowed to proceed to the next lesson unless you have completed the previous one. Zipping through the lessons is also discouraged. You will not be able to click on a new lesson immediately after clicking on the previous one—a reasonable length of time (one assumes the time required to read through the lesson completely) needs to pass before you can move on to the next.

Each unit has a quiz, which you can take only once. You can, however, save your progress and come back to the quiz later. There are also worksheets and activities that you will need to complete; you upload your finished work to the class Dropbox. Both courses also have a midterm exam, and a final exam. Again, you can take the quizzes and exams only if you have completed the lessons preceding them.

All your learning materials are in your course homepage (which is different from your main dashboard). This includes PDF files, links to videos or other references, and actual text from the e-chapter. Some of the videos are also embedded in the lesson page itself. You will need a username and password to access some of the material; your teacher should have sent you the required information at the beginning of the semester (so make sure that you read each and every message from your teacher!). 

The course homepage also takes you through the basics of the Buzz platform, with video and text to demonstrate how you can get the most out of the system. Other than course materials, Buzz also includes productivity tools like a To-Do list, a calendar, and a message center.

You can view all your courses, grades, messages, activities, exams and progress on your main dashboard. Other useful features include the suggested pacing, contact information of your teachers and exam administrators. 

I decided to do the required work on these courses myself, because neither of my daughters are old enough for them, but mostly because my husband and I are trying to make a go at a homesteading/farming life. Coming from the publishing and IT industries, we know zilch about agriculture, so these courses are a great learning opportunity.

It has been decades since I had to do any formal school work—with teachers actually checking assignments and issuing grades! The experience has made me empathize with my kids a bit more when they get behind on school work.

One thing that you will need though, as with any self-paced online class, is the discipline to do the work. I find that it takes a lot of effort on my end to keep up with the coursework. I wouldn’t say the courses are a heavy load, because they are doable. The e-chapters are short but packed. Some lessons may have numerous links to other resources that need to be read, but again they are not too long. It does take me some time to process the information in my mind. I don’t know if that’s because it’s a whole new vocabulary (I have never really thought about media pH or CEC and nutrient content) or because my mommy brain has atrophied.  But I find that between income-generating work, homeschool, and household chores, I find myself falling farther and farther behind my coursework. And that, of course, is not the fault of Nelson Academy, but my own.

In fact, my teacher has been supportive. I emailed him early in the semester that I may be behind (it’s been a weird, happens-in-the-movies combination of circumstances: move to a new city, changing jobs, loss of electricity and connectivity, and a super typhoon, among other things) and he has been kind enough not to kick me out of his classes yet.

That’s one thing I appreciate about this online learning course: they school is always in contact. I get sent a weekly progress report for my courses (showing how delayed I am—eep!); I also get reminders, both system-generated and from the teacher. The teacher himself is very responsive to email (although there are very specific instructions on email format that you must follow in order to get a quicker response).

While it takes me some time to go through them, I also appreciate the plethora of available materials. The Financial Planning course, for example, has a link to a site specifically for beginning farmers that features articles on planning, evaluation, growing your farm; they even have checklists and workbooks! One downside though, is that some of the links have expired, or lead to that dreaded 404 error message.

Another down for me is the portfolio work. Creating a portfolio for every unit is one of the things that I am having difficulty with. Each unit portfolio needs samples of the work accomplished for the unit; research on new and innovative ideas related to the topic; and a reflection on the learning from the unit. At the end of the courses, I will need to have 15 portfolios for my Financial Planning class, and 16 for my Greenhouse class. Plus the major SAE project.

While I understand the wisdom of such—in fact I have my kids do a quarterly portfolio for all their subjects—it can be very burdensome. I know that creating a portfolio helps cement the ideas learned and helps develop critical thinking. But I really am struggling to fulfill this part of the course requirements. I am trying to figure out how other people do it, especially if they take more than two courses, and have other obligations. Theoretically though, I agree with it, and I wonder how I can apply the same to our own homeschool (without weighing down the kids too much).

Overall, I am enjoying the courses and I really love what I am learning. I think that the courses are very informative and are presented in an engaging manner. I appreciate the feedback and the constant communication. They have a comprehensive catalogue of agricultural courses, and if I had the opportunity, I would definitely want to study more (perhaps one course at a time).

- Product review by Rheea Hermoso-Prudente, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, November, 2018