Unit Synopsis
In this unit, you will be introduced to the foundations of plant science including introductory plant physiology (structure and function), and taxonomy related to agricultural cropping. You will investigate a range of crop production systems including dry-land, irrigated, intensive vegetable cropping, broad acre grain and fibre cropping, horticulture and orchard cropping. You will develop knowledge of crop nutrition, crop protection, agri-tech, environment impacts and legislation relevant to cropping, which will provide you with the foundations from which you will extend your learning in future units in this course.
Details
| Level | Undergraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 1 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 1 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
There are no pre-requisites for the unit.
Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School |
Compulsory Residential School View Unit Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2026
Term 2 - 2026 Profile
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Online Quiz(zes) | 30% |
| 2. Portfolio | 30% |
| 3. Written Assessment | 40% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site .
Term 2 - 2024 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 77.78% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 21.95% response rate.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: Self reflection.
Feedback on assessments needs to engage the student so it is useful for future improvement.
Students will be requested to provide information on how they would like to receive feedback. Where possible these requests will be met to improve student learning.
Students were questioned on how they would like to receive feedback. A small number of students identified they would like to receive interactive discussion style question and answer style feedback in class, both during the preparation of assessments and following grading of assessments. This was provided for all assessment pieces.
Source: In class.
Face to face and online tutorial sessions were extremely helpful.
Face to face sessions will continue including a range of practical demonstrations and activities.
Face to face sessions were delivered in 2024 including some new workshop activities and practical demonstrations.
Source: Student Unit Evaluation Scores
Assessment feedback was not useful.
The unit coordinator will engage students to request favoured feedback mechanisms and will endeavour to implement these requests.
In Progress
Source: Student Unit Evaluation Comments
Additional activities were requested for the residential school.
Additional activities will be developed for the residential school.
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Explain the fundamentals of plant science including plant physiology (structure and function), and taxonomy related to agricultural cropping
- Identify key technologies that improve the productivity and environmental sustainability of cropping
- Develop a crop management plan for a crop production system
- Critique and explain the environmental and legislation requirements of crop management systems.
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 - Online Quiz(zes) | • | • | • | |
| 2 - Portfolio | • | • | ||
| 3 - Written Assessment | • | • | • | |
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 - Communication | • | • | • | • |
| 2 - Problem Solving | • | • | • | |
| 3 - Critical Thinking | • | • | • | |
| 4 - Information Literacy | • | • | • | |
| 6 - Information Technology Competence | • | • | • | |
| 8 - Ethical practice | • | • | ||
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 10 | |
| 2 - Portfolio | • | • | • | • | • | ||||||
| 3 - Written Assessment | • | • | • | • | • | ||||||
| 1 - Online Quiz(zes) | • | • | • | ||||||||