Education is a fundamental human right and a crucial tool for sustainable human capacity development, which can advance the economic growth of a country. Yet for many children in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), quality education remains out of reach. This study aimed to identify the barriers and challenges to enacting Sustainable Development Goal 4: “Ensuring Inclusive, Equitable, and Quality Education and the Promotion of Lifelong Learning Opportunities for All”. Through a content analysis of the relevant literature, we identified three themes: funding constraints, access and inclusion, and teacher education. Regarding funding, issues of resource allocation, technical capacity, and accountability were identified as primary factors requiring intervention strategies to become fully realized in SSA. When exploring access and inclusion, we found that incorporating students with disabilities, gender disparities, physical barriers, and inadequate curriculum are essential factors limiting quality education in SSA. Finally, teachers’ conditions and training emerged as crucial challenges to reach quality pedagogy. Some SSA countries have improved their efforts for quality education, but these barriers and challenges continue to impact education for all children. A new perspective on mitigating these impediments can address several factors responsible for the exclusion of diverse groups from accessing quality education in the SSA region.

Precision agriculture (PA) is a holistic, sustainable, innovative systems approach that assists farmers in production management. Adopting PA could improve sustainable food security and community economic sustainability. Developing an understanding of PA adoption attributes is needed in order to assist extension practitioners to promote adoption and better understand the innovation adoption phenomena. A systematic review of literature was conducted to investigate attributes that foster PA adoption. Thirty-three publications were examined, and four themes were found among the reviewed publications. The results were interpreted using Rogers’ diffusion of innovations framework to address the research objectives. Relative advantage and compatibility were two dominant attributes needed to strengthen the adoption of PA, and the complexity attribute was rarely communicated to promote the adoption of PA. The systematic review indicated the rate of farmer’s PA adoption does not occur at the highest potential levels due to inadequate communication of PA attributes from change agents to farmers. Extension field staff need professional development in communicating the five PA adoption attributes to farmers in order to improve PA adoption and enhance local sustainable food security. Thus, authors recommend future complexity studies from agricultural extension specialists’ perspectives to comprehend demonstratable approaches to motivate farmers’ adoption of PA.

Precision agriculture (PA) is a holistic, sustainable, innovative systems approach that assists farmers in production management. Adopting PA could improve sustainable food security and community economic sustainability. Developing an understanding of PA adoption attributes is needed to assist extension practitioners to promote adoption and better understand the innovation adoption phenomena. A systematic review of literature was conducted to investigate PA adoption. Thirty-three publications were examined, and four themes were found among the reviewed publications. The results were interpreted using Rogers’ diffusion of innovations framework to address the research objectives. Of the reviewed literature, we found relative advantage and compatibility were two dominant attributes to strengthen the adoption of PA, and the complexity attribute was rarely used to promote the adoption of PA. This study shows that change agents do not fully use five attributes of innovation when they promote PA technology to stakeholders to adopt. Thus, we recommend studies from the agricultural extension specialists’ perspectives in the future may determine contributions to motivate farmers’ adoption of PA, in particular related to complexity.

Agricultural educators are familiar with the three domains of learning: 1) cognitive, 2) affective, and 3) psychomotor. When teaching agricultural content, the instructional and assessment strategies are typically focused on the cognitive domain of learning because of the difficulty in measuring gains in the affective domain. The purpose of this study was to measure affective learning after viewing an asynchronously delivered simulation, reflecting (metacognition), and writing about the experience. Research in agricultural education is devoid of writing as an assessment tool to measure learning in the affective domain. Content analysis of 83 reflective writing samples was used to analyze affective learning at the levels of receiving, responding, valuing, organization, and characterization. It was evident in the reflective writing that all students participated at the receiving and responding levels. It is much more difficult to assess students at the higher levels of the affective domain (valuing, organizing, and characterizing). From the analysis of reflective writing, the researchers recognized and determined that some students expressed affective learning at higher levels of the affective taxonomy and increased their level of reflective writing in the process.

Advanced Methods in Distance Education: Applications and Practices for Educators, Administrators and Learners: 9781591404859: Educational IS&T Books

The purpose of the study was to evaluate and measure perceived learning in a training program delivered via distance education. The program was entitled: Course Design for the Digital Age: Instructional Design and Materials Conversion. The study documents the growth in distance education core competencies of professionals in Costa Rica using a competency-based behaviorally anchored instrument. The study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. The resulting scores provide outcome assessment measures useful for researchers and practitioners for documenting the results of self-assessment and comparing observable behaviors of competence.