Enhancing Students Class Participation in the Case of Second Year Horticulture Students

Abstract

Active student participations in class play meaningful role in satisfying educational objectives and raising students personality. To assure quality of education, enhancing students’ class participation has become very decisive as direct personal observation, registrar and departmental documents of students show they have very low performance and interest for class participation.  The purpose of this action research is to identify hindering factors for active participation in classroom based teaching learning process and to enhance students active participation in classroom based teaching learning process in Debre Markos University Burie Campus particularly department of horticulture. To conduct this study, descriptive case study design and both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed. The quantitative data are collected from horticulture 2nd year students. Qualitative data was collected through observation and focus group discussion. The data was analyzed by using percentage, frequency and mean. The data obtained through observation and focus group discussion were analyzed using narrative description. The finding of the study revealed that students participation about active participation was low and active participation of students was challenged by different problem like lack of awareness about active learning practices, lack of preparation in advance on the lesson, lack of continuous support from the instructors, lack of sufficient time for discussion, Instructor teaching methodologies, and lack of reward means for active participant students from instructor before the implementation of action plan. Nevertheless, by utilizing the proposed actions like creating awareness about the active learning practices, giving teaching materials in advance for preparation with discussion questions, supporting and encouraging them to participate actively, allocate sufficient time for discussion, improve on student centered teaching learning process and motivating actively participate students the researchers observed improvement on active participation of students. As a result, majority of the students (84.62%) have positive attitude on active participation since they believed that active participation will help them to share new ideas with their friends. Though some students are still inactive perhaps due to different psychological and personal factors that need further investigation; the actions implemented also bring some important changes that enhanced students’ class participation.

Keywords: Class participation, Enhancement, Studen