University Agricultural Students’ Perception of the Classroom Learning Environment in Their Entrepreneurship Courses

Abstract1
Entrepreneurship education programs have been lauded for decades for their
role in fostering students’ entrepreneurial attitudes and skills. However, there is a
scarcity in the literature exploring learning environment in these programs.
Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to examine agricultural students’
perceptions of their classroom environment in entrepreneurship courses and to
investigate relationships between these perceptions and students’ satisfaction with
the courses and their perceptions of opportunity identification. Perception data
were gathered by questionnaire from 105 agricultural students at two Iranian
universities. Overall, respondents assessed the learning environment as average.
Therefore, improvements are required across all seven dimensions of the learning
environment. Correlation analysis revealed that students’ perceptions of their
learning environment in entrepreneurship were significantly associated with their
course satisfaction and opportunity identification perceptions. Especially, the
results revealed that students’ satisfaction and opportunity identification perception
were significantly greater in students who highly valued encouragement by
education. The study discusses these findings and provides some recommendations
on how to improve the learning environments and learning outcomes.