Author: mmulder

Martin Mulder is Emeritus Professor of Education and Director-Owner of MM Consultancy for Education and Training. He published widely with his colleagues and students about issue related to competence development, vocational and professional education, higher education, teacher education, and learning technology.

Martin Mulder is Emeritus Professor of Education and Director-Owner of MM Consultancy for Education and Training. He published widely with his colleagues and students about issue related to competence development, vocational and professional education, higher education, teacher education, and learning technology.

Horticulture curriculum development project Kenya

A Dutch consortium, of which ECS is part, conducts a 4-year project on capacity and curriculum development in the field of horticulture. The project has a strong sector development character. The Kenyan partners are the Practical Training Center in the field of Horticulture (PTC),  the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya (FPEAK), the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and the Department of Horticulture of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT). All partners have a strong commitment to innovate and revise existing and develop new education and training programs to serve the production sector. A PhD-project will be included. The PhD-project will be on showing the impact of the new education and training programs on human resources development in the sector, and sector development itself. We are searching for an excellent Kenyan candidate with strong educational research skills who can combine practical work with sound data collection and processing, and scientific writing skills. Continue reading Horticulture curriculum development project Kenya

New publication

As a result of the PhD project of Omid Noroozi, a new publication appeared in an edited volume on collaborative and distributed research in the field of e-learning. The full reference is: Noroozi, O., Biemans, H.J.A., Busstra, M.C., Mulder, M., Popov, V., & Chizari, M. (2012). Effects of the Drewlite CSCL platform on students’ learning outcomes. In: Juan, A., Daradoumis, T., Roca, M., Grasman, S. E., & Faulin, J.  (Eds.), Collaborative and Distributed E-Research: Innovations in Technologies, Strategies and Applications. Hershey: Information Science Reference (pp. 276-289). For more information check: http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/effects-drewlite-cscl-platform-students/63513

New horticulture curriculum development and research project in Kenya

ECS is going to conduct a project on horticulture curriculum development and research in Kenya. We did this also in Uganda and Ethiopia. The core of the project is to develop 11 curricula at BSc and MSc level. In this project we will again test the principles for competence-based education which we formulated and evaluated already in various studies. This time we are planning to start with a base-line measurement of competentiveness of the curricula and teaching practices. This will also be monitored during the course of the project, to see whether the project will add value on key variables such as practicality of the curriculum, interactivity in teaching and learning, authentic assessment and career development perspective. To stimulate the sustainability of the project results a Kenyan PhD-student will be selected to study the development, implementation and impact of the curricula. The project will last 4 years, so the final results will be expected in 2016.

Meeting with Taylor and Francis staff on JAEE

Met with Zoe Sternberg and Stephany Astill from Taylor and Francis in Oxford to discuss the Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension (JAEE). We have discussed the name change of the journal, but did not reach consensus. The point is that both agricultural education and extension are experiencing a revival worldwide. I wrote about this in my editorial pieces in the JAEE. Our alternative, Education and Communication for Innovation is perceived as being too general. A title change is also bad for citation analysis, so we decided to keep the title the same for a while. We will further work on quality improvement and citations to the journal in 2012. Continue reading Meeting with Taylor and Francis staff on JAEE

January 10, 2012, Research Presentation ‘Enduring Learning’

A Research Meeting will be organised by ECS on January 10, from 10:00-11:00hrs in the Leeuwenborch (Hollandseweg 1, Wageningen) in room C83. Invited speaker at this Meeting is Dr. Nicolet C.M. Theunissen. Nicolet is psychologist and Senior Research Scientist of the expertise group `Training & Performance Innovations’ at TNO. The question “How to help people to become the director of their own life”  is a recurring subject in her research work. For more information: www.ntheunissen.nl. The theme of her talk is Enduring Learning. Under the flag of `Enduring Learning’, TNO contributes to enduring and evidence-based improvements in learning. This ‘learning’ includes both formal and informal learning and as such takes place within the field of education and training as well as within companies and organizations. It is ‘enduring’, because people become self-directed, flexible and innovative learners who can and will keep on learning throughout their entire lifespan. Moreover, it is ‘enduring’ because the technology for on- and off-line learning is designed in such a way that reuse is promoted and new technological possibilities can be incorporated without starting from scratch. And it becomes ‘enduring’ by the transformation of organizations into learning organizations. These are organizations that facilitate the learning of all its members and continuously transform themselves. The approach of Nicolet is ‘evidence based’ because she believes that a scientific foundation helps to decide which improvements make a valuable contribution for a learner, an education organization, a company or institution or society as a whole. During the meeting a picture will be given of the TNO research line ‘Enduring Learning’. This meeting is open to all who are interested in this theme.