Effectiveness of PEWI for student learning about agriculture and ecosystem service trade‐offs

Abstract Training students to effectively evaluate complex information is crucial for achieving multidimensional goals in agricultural and natural resource management. The People in Ecosystems Watershed Integration (PEWI) digital learning tool was developed to facilitate student exploration and learning toward this end. Previous research documented PEWI's alignment with the Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. However, its effect on learning outcomes, such as intrinsic motivation, critical thinking, comprehension, and knowledge self‐efficacy, had not yet been assessed. We addressed this gap by examining PEWI's impact on the learning of 58 volunteer students enrolled in an undergraduate natural resource economics class at Iowa State University. Learning outcomes were assessed through a post‐training evaluation survey instrument. Students' evaluation of PEWI was positive across all measures: K‐mode statistical classification only produced clusters of students with “agree” or “strongly agree” responses and no neutral or negative clusters. Structural equation modeling indicated that PEWI's impact on critical thinking and comprehension contributed to a high sense of knowledge self‐efficacy for designing watersheds to meet multiple agricultural and ecosystem service outcomes. Overall, this case study supports PEWI's ability to help students holistically assess complex information and implement changes in management practices and land use that minimize agroecosystem tradeoffs and maximize synergies in a virtual space. The next step is to assess whether students can apply their learning to the real world, leading to positive outcomes for people, soil, water, and wildlife.