Self-directed learning environments of farm businesses – case studies in Queensland

Self-directed learning environments of farm businesses – case studies in Queensland

Rural business managers are increasingly juggling economic and environmental pressures as they strive to optimise productivity and maximise profitability for their farm business. Each business drives its own agenda for learning to support innovation and improvement, and seeks relevant information, people and resources. This research explored the self-directed learning environments of grain and cotton growers in order to inform future development of digital learning tools to support farm business learning. The unique combination of property, farming system and business and human resourcing defined each business learning environment and its information needs. Learning was strongly characterised by growers having experiences and sharing these. Digital tools that enable the representation of these (such as case studies and images, Youtube) and facilitate learner's reflections on these would potentially add value to farmer self-directed learning.

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