Agricultural system models play increasingly important roles in creating sustainable agriculture businesses across diverse agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions. Agricultural system models are being used for various types of landscape-scale, national, and global modeling and analysis. Models provide information to land managers, policymakers, and the general public that inform management practices, public policy design, research and development, and investment decisions in order to maximize sustainability goals. Learners will use models as “thinking tools” to inform strategy by looking at how different variables in different magnitudes and times affect outcomes in specific contexts. Understanding and using models are preferred versus field and farm experiments that require large amounts of resources and may still not provide sufficient information to identify appropriate and effective management practices. This course will explain how manipulation of a sustainable agriculture model helps learners focus onagriculturalsystems as a whole and understand the multiple variables that interact within that system to achieve economic and sustainability outcomes
An excellent online course offered by edX: how it works
edX courses consist of weekly learning sequences. Each learning sequence is composed of short videos interspersed with interactive learning exercises, where students can immediately practise the concepts from the videos. The courses often include tutorial videos that are similar to small on-campus discussion groups, an online textbook, and an online discussion forum where students can post and review questions and comments to each other and teaching assistants. Where applicable, online laboratories are incorporated into the course.
edX offers certificates of successful completion and some courses are credit-eligible. Whether or not a college or university offers credit for an online course is within the sole discretion of the school. edX offers a variety of ways to take courses, including verified courses where students have the option to audit the course (no cost) or to work toward an edX Verified Certificate (fees vary by course). edX also offers XSeries Certificates for completion of a bundled set of two to seven verified courses in a single subject (cost varies depending on the courses).
An edX learning programme under Other Experiences
