Participant or professor centered learning? A comparative study in Applied Social Sciences

Abstract

The quantitative approach in the Business courses has distressed students searching for humanistic contents in Applied Social Sciences area of knowledge. One can observe this in the Materials and Patrimonial Properties Management course taught during the Business Administration program. This situation becomes still worse when the course is offered on Fridays evenings. This study dealt with four classes (morning and evening sessions) in two private institutions. The course was taught according to two procedures: a) professor centered, and b) participant centered. The same activities were scheduled in a distinctive way. The results indicated that the students' achievement were (statistically significant at 1%) superior in the participant centered procedure (P2) in comparison to the professor centered procedure (P1). Very low investments for designing and planning the didactic materials made possible to produce better achievement of the students.

Keywords

• participant centered learning
• business administration
• applied social sciences.