A new online course, set up by Iowa State University Extension, is being offered this summer for the continuing education of agriculturalists in the Midwest.

The advanced grain marketing course, offered online through WebCT, is scheduled as “a correspondence course on steroids,” said Tim Eggers, field specialist in Agricultural Economics.

In a short time, the course will cover 10 topics encompassing the processes and concepts of marketing grain, Eggers said.

“We will be dealing with the actual process of decision-making steps and response techniques in marketing grain,” he said.

Offering the course in the online format is the best and most cost-effective way to reach the target market of farmers, agribusiness professionals, agricultural lenders and crop insurers, Eggers said. In addition to the extended opportunities of the web structure, a team of experts will be addressing the course rather than a single professor.

One of the members of the team, Steve Johnson, field specialist in cooperative extension, said the abilities of an online class are exciting.

“With this, we are creating a community of online learners no longer separated geographically,” he said.

Eggers said that with a Web site, farmers don’t have to be on campus to participate in study groups or to be in class, which can be time-consuming activities for people who don’t have a lot of free time. Students in the Web course can access the class 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“It can be very time-consuming to set up meetings, and if our targets don’t have the time, they simply can’t or won’t come. We must reserve face-to-face time for more important issues,” Eggers said. “This information has to be something of significant value in their world, and it must be timely as to not take away from more pressing matters.”

Eggers said this is especially crucial in the summer term because of the heightened level of activity in the agriculture world.

The course must build the students’ skills in preparation for some topics, but cannot go into the depth that a normal college course would.

“We already have to deal with smaller class size and seasonal issues,” Eggers said.

“This opportunity has built a great online community with the ability to remain anonymous as well as allowing similar people in similar situations chat about solutions to common problems inside the area of grain marketing,” Eggers said.

Along with the online bonus, Eggers said he hopes the class draws a crowd in for continuing education.

“We hope that this class will provide the realization that they need to improve skills for marketing grain,” Eggers said.

More than 140 people took the class last fall. Though enrollment is expected to decrease summer term, Eggers said the marketing course will continue its course work.

“This isn’t a one shot effort put together overnight. Web development took about a year to get going, so this isn’t just a grant-funded quickie job,” Eggers said. “We’ve built this up with the intent to continue in growth to reach out to more and more people in the agricultural field.”