Impact of Online Learning on High School Agricultural Education Courses in Alabama

Abstract

The proliferation of online learning during the past decade is believed to have addressed multiple challenges facing secondary and post-secondary educators, yet outcomes are still being weighed. This study of Alabama Agricultural Educators provided insights to the potential practice of online learning in agriculture education courses. Apart from demographics and general background information, this instrument is divided into three scales. The instrument was adapted from Chang and Fisher (1998) WEBLEI. The instrument looked at access of online learning, interaction of online learning, and the perception of online learning in agriculture education courses. The content of this instrument was validated with inter rater reliability by a graduate Agricultural Education Survey Design Course.

This dissertation reports on research involving a random sampling of Agricultural Educators in Alabama. This dissertation provides a statistical analysis of Alabama Agricultural Education teachers’ perceptions of an online learning environment reporting frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviations, Pearson’s coefficient, and linear regressions. The conclusions, implications, and resulting recommendations focused on the themes of online learning in agriculture education as well as descriptive and correlation results focusing on statistical significance with the correlation of the dependent variables. Initial findings with the linear regression found no statistical significance.