As students’ maladjustment has become one of the eminent issues, Japanese universities are in need of special curricula for freshman students. This study aimed to examine the effects of an experimental learning program designed to promote interpersonal communication and team building in university physical education. The subjects were 16 university students (2 male and 14 female) who took the selective course "Team Sports" from April to June of 2016. The experimental learning program in the course was designed to help students 1) build relationships with others, 2) review that experience, 3) appreciate various perspectives in sharing their reviews with others and 4) cultivate new awareness. The subjects were asked to describe how they felt about the lessons freely on a reflection sheet. The contents of the reflection sheets were divided into seven categories ("Emotion," "Action," "Recognition," "Discovery," "Introspection," "Expectation" and "Assumption"), then classified as either "Group" or "Individual" and as either "Positive" or "Negative," so that there were 28 categories in total. After a tabulation of vocabulary from the reflection sheets of the first lesson (pre-test) and the last lesson (post-test), the contents in each category were analyzed with Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The number of "Positive" descriptions significantly increased from the pre-test to the post-test in "Recognition" and "Discovery" under the sub-group "Individual" and "Recognition" under the sub-group "Group." The number of "Negative" descriptions significantly increased from the pre-test to the post-test in "Emotion," "action," "Recognition" and "Discovery" under the sub-group "Individual" and "Action" under the sub-group "Group." The results indicated that students noticed the changes in their psychological states in the experimental learning program. Some of the changes found in the students are consistent with the reports of a previous study that lessons with group problem-solving help students gain more insight into themselves and others (Shimizu et. al, 2012). However, the students also displayed a growing anxiety and confusion in the program when they encountered inner-group conflicts caused by differences in opinions or failure at tasks. This may be because they were still in the process of building relationships at the end of the program. Further research is needed to develop effective programs to promote students’ university adaptation.
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