Learning results ‘Career Opportunities in Agriculture’
A month ago now, the group of students and teachers from the ‘Vasil Levski’ Professional School of Agriculture in Parvomay (Bulgaria) returned to their country, after having lived 3 intense weeks in Vilanova y la Geltrú (Barcelona), happy to have participated in the activity of training practices ‘Career Opportunities in Agriculture’ and a little sad to return home.
Despite being the first time that the FCV has hosted this type of activity, with the results of the evaluations in hand (written and online) we can say that the experience has been pretty successful.
The results of the written evaluations, carried out on the last day of the activity, show that it met the group’s expectations. In fact, 14 of the 19 students expressed that the program met 100% of their expectations and the lowest value was 90%. Of the set of activities carried out in 21 days, the best rated were the internships, carried out over 2 weeks, and the visits, especially the one carried out in Barcelona.
We want to highlight the fact that the answer to the question ‘which of the activities carried out was not useful or relevant?’ The whole group answered ‘none of them’, with a single exception (visit to Sitges) and with only 5 comments, 4 of them referring to waking up too early and the other to having to walk a lot.
We copy here all the answers to the question -what have you learned these 3 weeks?, once translated literally from Bulgarian: resoluteness, responsibility, patience; respect, responsibility, communicate; respect, teamwork, listen to each other, patience; respect, responsibility, communication; persistence, respect, patience; new things, meeting and talking to a lot of new people;
learned a bit of English; teamwork, respect, learned a lot of things that are useful in life; meeting new people, teamwork, respect;
how to harvest asparagus, a lot of other things; respect, communication, participation, love to work; respect, thinking, responsibility; sowing, digging, driving a tractor; learned new things; I learned a lot of things; how to harvest asparagus; communication, respect; responsibility;
The results of the online evaluations, carried out one week after the activity, to assess only the internships, are also very positive, both in terms of the evaluation of the dedication and support of the 5 supervisors, with an average of 4, 7, between 1 and 5, regarding the value and relevance of the tasks (4.58), the theoretical contents (4.63), the will to want to repeat the experience (4.77), the mean being general evaluation of the practices (first of the questions) of 4.67.
These results seem especially positive to us considering that only 1 of the 5 entities had previously hosted an internship program, that 3 of the 5 entities designed and implemented their own educational program created for the activity.
The trajectory of the FCV in terms of the use of the non-formal methodology was critical to achieve learning through observation, communication, action and reflection, as well as to favor teamwork and the ownership of each participant in terms of being able to take advantage of the experience to learn something new. The teachers of the center relied on the tools proposed by the FCV to collect the impressions and learning of the students in a daily base and they helped a lot in creating the appropriate spaces to share experiences between the various groups, students of 3 different subjects who carried out their practices in groups of only 3, 4 or 5 people (and despite linguistic, cultural and generational differences with supervisors). That the whole group acted and behaved as a single group was possible thanks, in part, to the games, challenges, leisure and cultural activities carried out during the first week, as well as the example and passion for the work of supervisors and other team members (almost 20 people) who helped in the organization of the activity, doing very diverse tasks, like simultaneous translation from Catalan to Bulgarian, transporting and accompanying the group, preparing and supervising the practices, cooking for the whole group, or making the video of the activity, which we encourage you to see in this link.