Abstract

When students leave the university with a bachelor’s degree, they often take jobs at a managerial level. These jobs involve decisions that relate to their education. Current programs test to determine if students have learned or mastered the material, but not how confident they are in the application of that knowledge. Confidence pre-and post-surveys were developed by taking the topics covered in each of two very different senior level courses and formulating questions around those topics. The surveys were administered at the beginning and end of two different horticulture (nursery management and crop production and horticulture/agriculture: business for agricultural enterprises) capstone courses. The focus of these surveys was on how confident the students felt about knowledge previously covered in other courses that were related specifically to each capstone course. Based on the initial surveys, depth of topics to be covered during class time was either increased or decreased. Results showed that by redirecting the course materials and content based on the initial responses, student confidence in their knowledge of the material increased. Positive observed mean differences, which indicate an increase in confidence, were significantly different [1.42 (nursery) and 1.46 (business)] from the mean differences calculated using a permutation test (P<0.01). The observed mean differences between the two courses were also very close indicating that this method successfully increased student confidence despite the very different subject material covered. Thus, faculty may want to consider constructing a confidence survey for senior/capstone level classes and adjust the covered material accordingly.