Evaluation and Analysis of Key Contexts to Improve Practical Courses in Agricultural Higher Education from the View Points of the Students

The main goal of this research was to investigate the key areas & skills for improvingpractical courses of agricultural higher education from the view points of students inthe University Colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran.This study was conducted by applying a dominant-less-dominant research approach(quantitative and qualitative respectively). The statistical population comprised of 2032students and. The instrument of the research was a researchers-made questionnairecontaining 46 items. The validity was approved by pommel faculty members of theDepartment of Agricultural Extension & Education, University of Tehran. Reliability ofthe questionnaire was calculated by Cranach's Alfa coefficient α=0.962. Factor analysiswas the main statistical method used for analysis of the data. The results indicate thatthere are five key components in classifying the practical skills namely; agronomical &horticultural skills, animal husbandry, general skills, agri-businesses, and, irrigationsmanagement which all together explained 65.995 percent of the total variance.