Encouraging and requiring agronomy and animal science students to learn to identify plants is often frustrating for instructors and students. Many courses require identification skills as a basic foundation and desire those skills be learned early in the course to enhance other concepts. Proper identification skills require an awareness of various learning modalities, an understanding of how memories work, and careful presentation of the skills of identification.

After years of helping students learn to identify common plants and watching the difficulties experienced, a new concept is presented in the Forage Identification CD-ROM.

Twenty common forages (10 grasses and 10 legumes) are presented in a sequential, memory-building manner that tutors learners to recognize and use their modality strengths and mentors a review process to accumulate the identification skills.

Most of the identification materials currently available are references with taxonomies or visual matching to identify plants. But no skills are taught and no long-lasting benefits are acquired. The Forage Identification CD-ROM teaches users to look at plants with a discerning eye. It provides knowledge and essential vocabulary. It presents the basics for all future plant identification.

The Forage Identification CD-ROM has many additional features: a glossary, web-linkage, seed ID, forage plants in different stages of maturity, close-up, full-plant, and field photographs, flashcard review, multiple choice review, over 350 photographs and 60 drawings, scientific and common names presented visually and auditorially.