BUSINESS EDUCATION STUDENTS’ RATING OF THE BENEFIT OF FIELD TRIP AND PROJECT-BASED STRATEGIES FOR LEARNING ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

The study focused on Business education students’ rating of the benefits of field trips and project-based strategies for learning entrepreneurship education in tertiary institutions in South-South, Nigeria. Two research questions, two written interview questions guided the study, and two null hypotheses were tested. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population comprised 982 Business education students in all the 21 public tertiary institutions in the area offering entrepreneurship education, census survey sampling method was adopted. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire. The instrument was validated by three experts. Cronbach Alpha method was used to obtain the reliability coefficient, and the values obtained were 0.94 and 0.92 for clusters B1 and B2 to determine the internal consistency of the items instrument. Data collected were analyzed using mean, frequency, percentage, ranking, and written interview questions to answer the research questions, and standard deviation to determine the closeness of respondents’ responses, respectively, while the t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at a 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed, among others, that respondents agree that field trips and project-based learning are strategies for learning entrepreneurship education and are also beneficial for acquiring necessary entrepreneurship skills for self-reliance. To boost the research questions, respondents ranked field trip and problem-based strategies 1^st position as it provides every student with a real-world experience; engagement, motivation, and understanding in learning entrepreneurship education. The findings further revealed, among others, that Business education students in tertiary institutions in South-South, Nigeria, differ significantly in their mean ratings of the benefits of field trip and project-based strategies for learning entrepreneurship education based on gender. The study concluded that business education students agreed that the benefits of field trips and project-based strategies encourage them to learn appropriate skills and competencies to become self-employed, self-sustained, and job creators upon graduation. It was recommended among others that Business education students should use field trips and project-based strategies when learning entrepreneurship education, as it would promote experiential learning, collaboration, and real-world problem-solving, thereby fostering essential entrepreneurial skills such as creativity, innovation, leadership, and resilience