Quality Standards for Teaching Social Farming – what future farmers need to know to be successful

What do future social farmers need to know to be successful? The “Quality standards for teaching social farming” respond to this question. The strategic partnership “Social Farming in Higher Education” has developed quality standards that help higher education institutions do develop social farming lessons that pay attention to the interdisciplinary of social farming.

This paper wants to support higher education institutions that are offering or planning to offer social farming courses. It aims at determining quality standards that set the frame for high-quality education in social farming. The quality standards for teaching social farming refer to the teaching content and its prioritisation. This way they can support university course offers on social farming and its comparability in Europe.

Curriculum – Social Farming in Higher Education

Based on the Quality Standards developed in this project, a Curriculum for social farming in higher education has been developed.

The Quality Standards relate both to the subjects and topics included in the Curriculum. Therefore, all practitioners share a common base of knowledge, and the students develop skills and experiences during the programme, in accordance with the standard Bologna Accord procedures.

Textbook for direct use in the classrooms

The Textbook presents a selection of seven Abstracts elaborated into practical teaching material with the content, the exercises, the ideas for homework and containing other links and references.

Tips and tricks for teaching social farming online

This document is a guide to help those who wish to create online courses in social farming. It introduces the topic and the basic vocabulary of the field, and focuses on key themes such as design, pedagogics, etc., before providing a set of tips for how to structure and create content. This is followed by a specific section on MOOCs, introducing the basic vocabulary used by their proponents. Next to the comprehensive Online Guide, Ideas for teaching social farming online are summarized in a short presentation.