Each student chooses a new crop and throughout the course seeks to find information about their chosen crop and use this to prepare a Report on their Crop Improvement program. Throughout the course, lectures and seminars are used to introduce principles to guide the students in the manner in which their program should be planned. As each component is completed, the students report briefly to their colleagues on their findings, with respect to their chosen new crop. Very quickly, students establish, to their own satisfaction, the relevance of the information that they have learnt. In most cases, students have a high level of interest and have thus been motivated to learn the principles of Crop Improvement.
Students particularly enjoy the experience of being the expert in their chosen new crop.
Research conducted with this approach since 1994 has shown that it is a most effective manner of teaching Crop Improvement. There have been improvements in student understanding and student responses to surveys have been positive. The key to this success is believed to be the use of a new crop as the teaching tool. On the negative side, many students find it difficult to break away from the shallow approach to learning, due mainly to the perceived importance of examinations. This is only natural since so much teaching is still dominated by performance in final examinations.