Abstract:
Traditional student performance indicators such as age, gender, and socioeconomic status are important to understanding how students' background characteristics impact success at the collegiate level. However, student success in courses related to agriculture sciences and/or natural resource sciences may be related to both traditional and nontraditional performance indicators, including background in agriculture. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of academic major, class rank, gender, rural or urban background, and agricultural field experience on performance in an undergraduate level introductory forage crop management course. The study was conducted over five semesters from 2002-2004 at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Juniors and seniors scored 5% higher (P<0.1) than sophomores and 15% higher (P<0.1) than freshmen in both the lecture and laboratory sections of the course. Students majoring in Mechanized Systems Management and Agricultural Economics had a 5% and 7% lower (P<0.1) score, respectively, in the lecture and laboratory sections of the class. Students from a rural background with field experience in agriculture had 10% higher (P<0.1) scores in lecture than did students with no field experience in agriculture. Developing prerequisite coursework to familiarize inexperienced students with basic agricultural production systems may help improve overall performance in these introductory courses.
Keywords:
background, performance, crop
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