Teachers and students’ perception of competence-based education in the agricultural higher education system (Case of a student cooperative in Iran)

Purpose: This quantitative study sought to investigate the perceptions of teachers and students regarding competency-based education (CBE) principles at the College of Agriculture at Razi University.

Design: This research is a comparative analysis of two groups. The first group consists of undergraduate and graduate students majoring in agriculture who are members and non-members of student cooperatives (n?=?256). The second group consists of agricultural faculty members (n?=?59).

Findings: The results of this study show that students and teachers have different views with regard to the extent to which CBE principles are practiced in the College of Agriculture. Moreover, students with different learning patterns had different perceptions regarding the extent to which CBE is practiced, whereas teachers with different teaching patterns had the same perception of the application of CBE principles in the College of Agriculture.

Practical implications: This study has practical implications for agricultural higher education in general and colleges of agriculture in particular. Colleges of agriculture across Iran could encourage their students to establish and engage in student cooperatives so that the ‘what’ and ‘how’ aspects of CBE are put into practice.

Theoretical implications: This study has theoretical implications for CBE principles. For example, student cooperatives can be utilized by faculty members as one of the main strategies for developing CBE in agricultural colleges.

Originality/value: This study is original in that it moves from theory to practice when considering CBE.     

Using an instrument to analyse competence‐based study programmes: experiences of teachers in Dutch vocational education and training

Competence‐based education is becoming increasingly popular. Competencies are used more and more as the starting point for designing curricula and instructional methods, especially in vocational education and training, to realize authentic and self‐steering study programmes. Despite its popularity in both research and educational settings, there is no shared understanding of what competence‐based education should look like. Earlier work developed a model for competence‐based education that outlines eight features that are important for competence‐based education. This paper presents a study designed to determine the extent to which the model for competence‐based education can be understood and perceived as useful by teachers in vocational education and training in the Netherlands. The study included 12 teams of teachers in the process of designing or re‐designing their study programmes to be more competence‐based. Teachers reported that the instrument helped them understand the state of affairs of their study programmes, and empowered them to make decisions about the extent to which they want to make these programmes more competence‐based.     

Computer‐Assisted Instruction and Conceptual Change

Abstract

In this study, the question was addressed which instructional conditions are required to teach students how they themselves can initiate and perform learning activities aimed at conceptual change. The CONTACT‐2 strategy (a computer‐assisted instructional strategy for promoting conceptual change in the domain of basic physical geography) served as starting point for the design of several training procedures aimed at enhancing self‐regulated learning. With the first experimental condition, strategic support was gradually withdrawn ('faded') within each instructional step, while, with the second experimental condition, the number of steps was reduced as the training continued. The original CONTACT‐2 condition served as control condition. Subjects were 65 fifth‐ and sixth‐graders (primary education). Dependent variables concerned students’ abilities to initiate and perform learning activities aimed at conceptual change, the quality of their conceptions, and their learning performance. Results suggested that ‘fading’ can be a fruitful instructional approach to foster self‐regulated learning aimed at conceptual change, provided that the ‘fading’ procedure is tuned to the students’ actual level of self‐regulated learning: external control should not be withdrawn until students are able (and prepared) to initiate and perform the learning activities being required. When these conditions are met, designing effective training procedures aimed at ‘learning for conceptual change’ seems possible.     

Fostering oral presentation performance: does the quality of feedback differ when provided by the teacher,peers or peers guided by tutor?

Previous research revealed significant differences in the effectiveness of various feedback sources for encouraging students’ oral presentation performance. While former studies emphasised the superiority of teacher feedback, it remains unclear whether the quality of feedback actually differs between commonly used sources in higher education. Therefore, this study examines feedback processes conducted directly after 95 undergraduate students’ presentations in the following conditions: teacher feedback, peer feedback and peer feedback guided by tutor. All processes were videotaped and analysed using a coding scheme that included seven feedback quality criteria deduced from the literature. Results demonstrate that teacher feedback corresponds to the highest extent with the majority of the seven identified feedback quality criteria. For four criteria, peer feedback guided by tutor scores higher than peer feedback. Skills courses should incorporate strategies focused on discussing perceptions of feedback and practising providing feedback to increase the effectiveness of peer feedback.     

Peer assessment for learning from a social perspective: The influence of interpersonal variables and structural features

This paper reports a systematic literature review examining empirical studies on the effects of peer assessment for learning. Peer assessment is fundamentally a social process whose core activity is feedback given to and received from others, aimed at enhancing the performance of each individual group member and/or the group as a whole. This makes peer assessment an interpersonal and interactional process. Using this social perspective in order to study learning effects, we focus on the impact of the structural arrangement of peer assessment on learning, and the influence of interpersonal variables.The literature search, focusing on empirical studies measuring learning outcomes in a peer assessment setting, resulted in 15 studies conducted since 1990 dealing with effects (performance or perceived learning gains) of peer assessment. Our analysis reveals that, although peer assessment is a social process, interpersonal variables have hardly been studied; more specifically, they were measured in only 4 out of 15 studies. Moreover, they are not used to explain learning gains resulting from peer assessment. Finally, comparing the studies with respect to structural features reveals that, although the differences between the studies are significant, there seems to be no relation with the occurrence of learning benefits. The results of this review seem to indicate that research on peer assessment from a social perspective is still in its infancy and deserves more attention.