Factors affecting Work Integrated Learning student placement process for the Agricultural Management programme at Central University of Technology, Free State

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-134-0_11How to use a DOI?

Keywords

EcoCycle model; graduate attributes; industrial placements; Participatory Action Research; student preparedness

Abstract

Since 2017, resistance by the agricultural industry to accept the placement of Work Integrated Learning (WIL) students from the Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT) was observed in the Department of Agriculture. With the general monitoring, and feedback from farmers between 2018 and 2021, they explicitly stated to a greater extent that student preparedness for the CUT-WIL programme is a challenge. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the factors affecting the WIL student placement process for the Agricultural Management programme at CUT. Participatory Action Research was used to allow researchers to engage in a co-partnership relationship with academic staff, a group of students, and selected prominent farmers, who were described in this study as practitioners. Feedback from the academic staff practitioners’ engagements described the pull of the first years from diverse high schools as a main factor leading to low morale in agricultural discourse; in that way leading to disciplinary shock. Moreover, the teaching approach towards the first-year curriculum is irresponsive to the institutional graduate attributes; thereby significantly affecting the uptake of institutional culture. An EcoCycle model and benchmarking with other universities of technology were used to revise the first-year syllabus during 2022/23. A significant improvement was observed in the first semester following the revision and remodeling of WIL. However, the anticipated changes are further to be implemented in the second semester of 2023 until 2026 to observe the redressing of social justice in WIL.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Z. P. Khetsha
AU  - P. M. Makhoahle
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/11/06
TI  - Factors affecting Work Integrated Learning student placement process for the Agricultural Management programme at Central University of Technology, Free State
BT  - Proceedings of the 10th Focus Conference (TFC 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 160
EP  - 171
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-134-0_11
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-134-0_11
ID  - Khetsha2023
ER  -