Enhancing the classroom participation: The Case of 2nd Year Students of Water Resources and Irrigation Management (BSc) at Dilla University

Abstract

Education is a pillar to socio-economic, political and sustainable development of a society and it’s also a basic source for the civilization. Ensuring the quality of education plays a great role in the process of producing a creative and innovative generation which solves the world’s pronounced problems on their own means. After 1994 the Ethiopian new education policy was launched the student-centered approaches became popular and applied in many education centers in order to ensure the quality of education. However, in the higher education centers the implementation was very poor due to several reasons. In Dilla University also the implementation is so weak and student’s participation in the classroom is too passive. Hence, this action research was designed to enhance the participation of students in the class for the course soil and water conservation engineering. All of students registered for the course were selected and primary and secondary data collection methods were used to accomplish the work. The collected and observed data were organized and analyzed qualitatively and explained briefly. Intervention measures were designed by considering and out-looking the student’s condition in the classroom for the long time. Based on the study the factors affecting the participation of students in the classroom identified were shying and fearing for their friends, language problem, teaching methodology, and lack of material accessibility, sitting arrangement and others. Designed actions taken to solve the stated troubles were describing the lesson objectives clearly and precisely before the main topic, allowing students to talk freely in the classroom by oral motivation and appreciation system, orienting the sitting arrangements in the room, forming cooperative-learning teams, assigning duties and responsibilities for each student in their group and observing all students without any discrimination or bias. Actions which are taken to solve the problem have shown viable out-puts like self-esteem and confidence, self-respect among students and cooperativeness, participation in every issue raised by anyone, positive attitude for the cooperative-learning and speaking freely in and out of class. Hence, the devised or designed action plans have a great role in enhancing the participation of students in the classroom and shaped the learning environment in advanced way. Every instructor should implement the cooperative-learning system to increase the participation of students and to elevate the level of education quality in the universities.