Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science

116-128

Authors: PROCHÁZKA, Petr, SMUTKA, Luboš, STEININGER Michal

Study of agriculture enjoys less popularity over time in most of the developed countries, including Canada and the Czech Republic. Analysis in this paper provides interesting findings about activities of agricultural universities to increase enrollment into their programs. While the study is focused on Canada, it is possible to draw implications also for the Czech Republic as many of the characteristics pertaining to the education and agricultural sectors are similar. Enrollment into educational programs in agriculture in North America has been steadily declining in the last several decades. While the overall share of agriculture on national gross domestic product has also been falling, the need for qualified people in agriculture is still eminent as the shift to sustainable agriculture appears to be one of the key priorities of governments in the US and Canada. One of the ways how to facilitate interest of prospective students to study agriculture is to diversify the programs through offering of more major options. It is important to study the motivation and other stimuli for the choice of major in order to adapt the educational programs and attract more students. In the paper, factors influencing the choice of major are studied by analyzing survey data from the only agricultural college in Atlantic Canada. The results show significant differences in the socio-economic background among the prospective students based on the choice of major. For example, students interested in social sciences much more appraise more choices of major than students in biophysical fields. Based on the findings from the analysis, several recommendations are made. It is suggested, for example, that for students interested in biophysical sciences, sport plays an important role and thus, appropriate promotional campaign about recreation and sport facilities of a post-secondary agricultural educational institutions should be conducted. Analysis in this paper may serve many educational institutions in agriculture as a guide how to deal with existing or potential decline in enrollment by diversifying their major portfolio using appropriate promotional campaigns.

142-153

Authors: BARTOŠKA, Jan, SVOBODOVÁ, Radka, JARKOVSKÁ, Martina

The paper proposes the concept of project management teaching including the International Project Management Association (IPMA) standard. The concept of teaching is theoretical and derives from the notion of competence, which the IPMA standard is based on. The paper presents a brief description of the IPMA standard and endeavours to define the notion of competence. The competence is worked with in respect to hierarchical recognition. The proposed teaching concept works with the concepts of information, knowledge and skills. The teaching proposal stems from the structure and contents of the IPMA standard elements. Furthermore, the paper elaborates the issue of embedding the elements of the IPMA standard competences into training courses. In the article, the eye of the IPMA competences is further enhanced with possible training courses and specialist areas in which the standard elements can thematically be included. The paper states that the competence elements and training courses cross one another and overlap in a manifold way. The authors also propose a way which could verify into what extent the students have actually acquired taught IPMA competence elements. The paper contains the proposal of feedback quantification for the IPMA standard and project management teaching. The results of the paper can be used as a starting premise for future research. Both the verification proposal and the embedding of the elements into teaching are derived from on-going academic experience of the authors of the article.