2011 Volume 42 Issue 6 Pages 337-345
In Japan, community–based education remains uncommon in undergraduate programs for students in schools of health sciences. The purpose of this study was to examine how students are affected by their participation in off–campus classes, which are considered as a main course of community–based education at the School of Health Sciences, Gunma University.
1)Reports submitted by students after participating in off–campus classes were broken down into sentences (with care being taken that each sentence made sense). The extracted sentences were carefully consolidated by means of the Kawakita Jiro method (affinity diagram).
2)A total of 972 sentences were extracted and were categorized into 3 categories: "enjoy going out to the community," "increased activity through experiences," "awareness of what one wants to be and one's insufficient abilities." Five middle–sized categories and 10 small categories were obtained.
3)Experiences in off–campus classes are expected to increase the activity of students and to have synergic effects with on–campus classes.
4)Community–based education might be effectively included in undergraduate programs for students in schools of health sciences.
