Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science

170-177

Authors: BROŽOVÁ, Helena

The aim of this article is to describe the proposed methodology of identification of the students’ weights or preferences of teacher’s managerial competencies at the Faculty of Economics, Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague (CULS). The goal of this article is not to evaluate the teacher’s scientific ability but describe the evaluation of the teacher’s managerial competencies weights from students’ point of view. For setting of weights there are many different methods that varied in the proportion of including the subjective and objective judgement. Commonly diffused method is the Analytic Hierarchy or Network Process by prof. Saaty (AHP or ANP). Because it is not possible to see or to evaluate teacher’s competencies in complexity, we proposed the questionnaires for pairwise comparisons of various teacher’s managerial characteristics and competencies. These answers are then analysed using the AHP method. The AHP is a method deriving global weights from partial weights received as result of pairwise comparisons.

187-196

Authors: KREJČÍ, Igor; KVASNIČKA, Roman; DÖMEOVÁ, Ludmila

The system thinking is the important component of study at the Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CULS Prague) but the system dynamics is not the part of education there. Current effort is to focus on implementation of system dynamics into existing courses of Mathematical Methods in Economics. The objective of the paper is to design and test flexible seminars’ structure of system dynamics at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague during the lessons and seminars on the courses of Mathematical Methods in Economics. The results are necessary for successful introduction of system dynamics courses at CULS Prague. First part of the paper describes the role of system dynamics in education and the registered benefits from its implementation into education at different schools and universities. Second part contains the sources that constitute the basis for the seminars’ structure design. The proposed structure is tested in third part through the questionnaire and the opinions of students.

207-218

Authors: Milková, Eva

Logical thinking of students should be enhanced at all levels of their studies. There are many possibilities how to achieve it. In the paper one possible way within the subjects “Discrete Mathematics” and “Discrete Methods and Optimization” dealing with graph theory and combinatorial optimization will be presented. These mathematical disciplines are powerful tools for teachers allowing them to develop logical thinking of students, increase their imagination and make them familiar with solutions to various problems. Thanks the knowledge gained within the subjects students should be able to describe various practical situations with the aid of graphs, solve the given problem expressed by the graph, and translate the solution back into the initial situation. Student engagement is crucial for successful education. Practical tasks and puzzles attract students to know more about the explained subject matter and to apply gained knowledge. There are an endless number of enjoyable tasks, puzzles and logic problems in books like “Mathematics is Fun”, in riddles magazines and on the Internet. In the paper, as an inspiration, four puzzles developing logical thinking appropriate to be solved using graph theory and combinatorial optimization will be introduced. On these puzzles of different level of difficulty the students’ ability to find out the appropriate graph-representation of the given task and solve it will be discussed as well. The author of the paper has been prepared with her students various multimedia applications dealing with objects appropriate to subject matter for more than 15 years. In the paper we also discuss a benefit of multimedia applications used as a support of subjects “Discrete Mathematics” and “Discrete Methods and Optimization”.

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.

77-88

Authors: HUSÁK, Jakub; VOLKÁNOVÁ, Markéta

In the current postmodern society, knowledge is still more important. Also corresponding with this fact are the development theories which have been developed from the theory of learning organisation, the theory of learning regions to the relatively new term “learning economy” used in some current publications (e.g. Lam, Lundvall, 2006). Knowledge, learning process and education become an integral part of personality development and also the development of the whole of society. The concept of the “learning economy” is based on the responsibility of each member of society for its education and individual knowledge dynamics and also is based on the responsibility of the whole of society for the collective knowledge dynamics as a prerequisite of its successful development. In this context, the paper is focused on the preferences and ideas of potential applicants for university education within the process of the choice of universities. The main factors which influence the decision-making process of potential applicants for university education are examined by using quantitative empirical research. The correspondence of these factors, preferences and ideas with the requirements of the “learning economy” is also analysed. Attention is also paid to the responsibility of potential applicants for university education for the creation of their knowledge and knowledge dynamics (mainly codified and scientific knowledge are the focus of this paper).

97-104

Authors: PŘIBÁŇ, Tomáš; HODINÁŘ, Jan; VRBÍK, Václav

Nowadays computer literacy is one of the required conditions demanded by employer, who wants to success in today’s labor market. Unfortunately so called necessary minimum of knowledge is not exactly defined. In the Czech Republic computer literacy is an important part of basic education. Our educators face the difficult issue of assessing a level of computer literacy among our students. This case study compares two tools used for testing of computer literacy. For this study we selected two testing tools, the Original Testing System (OTS) and the Modified Testing System (MTS), and investigated them thoroughly by quantitative comparison. In our case study, this quantitative comparison of those testing tools was done using data collected from a freshman-level Word and Excel course in fall 2010 semester in the University of West Bohemia (UWB). Comparison was based on analysis of the performance of 138 students attending this course. We analyzed correlations between the scores from our two testing instruments. We conducted a paired sample t-test for the sake of comparison of the students’ performance between the examination scores. This study has limitations, which were discussed and based on them, recommendations for future works and directions were included.

18-30

Authors: LUSTIGOVÁ, Lenka

This study focuses on the development of speaking skills in intermediate and lower level university classes through the simplified format of debates. The aim of this paper is to describe teaching observations with special attention given to the preparatory stages, strengths and challenges of simplified debate faced by both the teacher and the students. Observations were made while teaching speaking through simple debate to 19 - 20 year-old-students of general English at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague in intermediate and lower level classes. By describing the methods and procedures used to engage in debates, this paper aims to enrich pedagogical methods for effectively teaching speaking skills and thus serve ESL teachers at large. By contextualizing debate within a milieu larger than the ESL classroom, this study also accesses possibilities for further application of simplified debate to heighten training for other subjects, while drawing upon the democratic context supported by debate.

46-56

Authors: DAŘENA, František

Importance of information systems in supporting business activities and managerial decision making is growing. Decisions related to selecting a suitable information system, including the technological background, human resources, procedures and information belong to one of the most difficult and most responsible ones. As in the case of other types of investments, assets and resources invested into information system should return in a reasonable time. There has been a lot of work done in the research and application of IS evaluation techniques to different kinds of information systems. Such evaluations involve a wide variety of technical and technological considerations made by technical experts, on the other hand impacts on management of the organization or financial impacts can be addressed. The objective of the paper is to reveal the preferences of graduate students related to their information systems evaluation and to propose a general framework for such evaluations. During the experimental period two surveys were carried out within the information systems course – at the beginning when the students were completely uninformed and at the end when the students had the knowledge of individual aspects of information systems, their role within organizations and process of information systems evaluation. The former survey used a simple scoring method whereas the latter relied on formal usage of the Analytical Hierarchy Process. The results show the differences in opinions of the students between these two surveys. Presented criteria hierarchy as well as the importance of individual evaluation criteria can be used for demonstration of attitudes of graduate students of management study programs and as a general framework for information systems evaluation.