Assessing Education Needs at Tertiary Level: The Focus Group Method
Keywords:
assessment, education needs, focus group method, students, tertiary level, and veterinary medicineAbstract
The goal of the paper is to point out the advantages and disadvantages of the focus group method in assessing the education needs of teachers and students in veterinary medicine. It is the first stage of a wider research aiming at developing problem-based teaching and learning methodologies in the field of veterinary medicine. The materials used consisted of literature documents on focus group as a research method in social sciences. The authors studied the literature available in the field and synthesised its main advantages and disadvantages. The paper is the first of this kind in Romania. Results show that there is no agreement yet on the advantages and disadvantages of this method. The research limitation is that there is almost no Romanian literature on focus group as a method. The usefulness of the paper is obvious: it allows other researchers in the field of education see the benefits of using such a research method. The originality of the paper consists in the fact that there has been no such research so far in Romanian higher education. Based on the results of the focus groups organised, the authors will design and implement a problem-based learning methodology for the students in veterinary medicine.
References
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