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The inherent complexity of soil and its interactions with Earth’s diverse spheres, including the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere within the ecosphere, and anthroposphere, requires that soil science specialists and students develop not only a profound understanding of soil science, but also the ability to collaborate across various disciplines to address these complex challenges. Equipping students with the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to tackle the intricate and dynamic issues of the 21st century, spanning soil science, water sciences, hydropedology, geology, agronomy, geotechnical engineering, sedimentation, waste management, recycling, and environmental management, is of paramount importance. In response, innovative pedagogical approaches that integrate classroom learning from diverse soil science courses with practical skills and field-based competencies are needed. This paper suggests merging our own “Soil Skills” (SSK) pedagogical method with the “Soil Judging Contest” (SJC), a teaching approach supported by the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America since 1961. This integration aims to enhance the holistic, harmonized, interdisciplinary, and enthusiastic nature of soil science education. Both the SSK and SJC approaches received positive feedback from students and demonstrated significant improvements in academic performance. Our study begins with an in-depth exploration of the SSK contest, followed by an overview of the pertinent aspects of the SJC. Subsequently, we offer a comparative analysis of the complementarity of these two approaches. Finally, in the concluding remarks, we summarize the strengths of the implemented SSK and outline prospective applications. Our findings underscore the unique advantages of combining SSK and SJC approaches in delivering comprehensive, problem-based, and practical field-learning experiences. This combination approach closely aligns with applied scenarios that demand multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity perspectives, preparing students for their future professional careers, and enabling the practical application of their soil science knowledge in real-world contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inherent complexity of soil and its interactions with Earth’s diverse spheres, including the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere within the ecosphere, and anthroposphere, requires that soil science specialists and students develop not only a profound understanding of soil science, but also the ability to collaborate across various disciplines to address these complex challenges. Equipping students with the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to tackle the intricate and dynamic issues of the 21st century, spanning soil science, water sciences, hydropedology, geology, agronomy, geotechnical engineering, sedimentation, waste management, recycling, and environmental management, is of paramount importance. In response, innovative pedagogical approaches that integrate classroom learning from diverse soil science courses with practical skills and field-based competencies are needed. This paper suggests merging our own “Soil Skills” (SSK) pedagogical method with the “Soil Judging Contest” (SJC), a teaching approach supported by the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America since 1961. This integration aims to enhance the holistic, harmonized, interdisciplinary, and enthusiastic nature of soil science education. Both the SSK and SJC approaches received positive feedback from students and demonstrated significant improvements in academic performance. Our study begins with an in-depth exploration of the SSK contest, followed by an overview of the pertinent aspects of the SJC. Subsequently, we offer a comparative analysis of the complementarity of these two approaches. Finally, in the concluding remarks, we summarize the strengths of the implemented SSK and outline prospective applications. Our findings underscore the unique advantages of combining SSK and SJC approaches in delivering comprehensive, problem-based, and practical field-learning experiences. This combination approach closely aligns with applied scenarios that demand multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity perspectives, preparing students for their future professional careers, and enabling the practical application of their soil science knowledge in real-world contexts.

• We present innovative inquiry based Soil Skills pedagogy for geoscience students. • Our problem based Soil Skills approach incorporates scaffolding and DIKW notations. • Course evaluation and questionnaire were used to assess the target-learning-outcomes. • The Soil Skills field competition fostered students' metacognition and competences. In this study, we present an interactive problem-based learning environment, namely, the "Soil Skills" contest for final year students majoring in Soil Sciences, a BSc program at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. This five-day component of a compulsory field-course exemplifies an active learning approach, which has been promoted by higher educators based on its efficacy and outcomes on the student's learning processes. Our pedagogical strategy integrates the concepts and notions of: (i) Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL), (ii) scaffolding, (iii) teams competition and gaming, and (iv) Data–information–knowledge–wisdom. We evaluated outcome-based learning objectives of two cohorts (2018 and 2020) of Soil Sciences students during the contest via a field evaluation by juries, composed of Soil Science faculty, using an objective evaluation scheme. The evaluation of the contest was also done through a combination of an online questionnaire sent to registered students and peer-assessment among students conducted by the group leaders. The results of teaching evaluation of the course, in the semester when the contest was implemented, showed a higher rating score (3.93/4.0) than the college average (3.16/4.0) for all other courses (about 150/semester) and also than the average score (3.30/4.0) of the course in the previous year. The surveys of two cohorts showed that majority of the students indicated positive improvements in various transferable and interpersonal metacognitive skills (self-reported improvements in problem-solving abilities, thinking out of the box, observation, teamwork, capacity to perform under pressure, and communication). Further surveys of forthcoming cohorts are needed. The Soil Skills pedagogy approach is in line with the call towards enriching geoscience students with the skills and competencies necessary to address real-world problems of complex Earth systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]