Agribusiness department at YATC

Meeting with Nyomoni Joseline

She has worked at the agricultural training centre since August this year after she had been attached to a similar institute for five months on her bachelor of agricultural economics in agribusiness management of Uganda martyrs university Namugongo.

In her teaching, she uses learning groups (group work), lectures, assignments and exercises to assess the learning of her students. The continuous assessment tests contribute 40% of the students’ grading and 60% by the final examination.

She schemes and plans her lessons but nearly follows them she is limited by the time assigned for the course unit or module i.e. 30 hours in three months. She further recommended that this training should be prolonged since it is very intensive for both the students and instructors. During her planning, her priority is based on students understanding the concepts.

She also highlighted courses which are designed according to the interests of the learners like bee keeping and poultry keeping which take just two weeks. In my observation, this important because it caters for individual differences since most of the students have hardly gone to school and benefit more from the practical.

She also stressed that farmers lack business skills where they only cultivate and hardly assess their input in relation to the profits made. Given her background and experience, she was assigned a responsibility of supervising the orchard, the diary, poultry, beekeeping and fish pond units to gain money for sustainability of the center.

The students are given a chance of transferring some the acquired knowledge and skills in their home areas through the farmers’ training centers (FTCs) to the ordinary people.

Reflections about our dialogue.
Given the short period of training, most of the learning is more teacher-centered especially in classrooms.This means that slow learners may not be catered for and may therefore lack the