Analysis of student members’ attitudes on out-of-curriculum science communication activities and resultant educational effects

Abstract

The out-of-curriculum project team “Rika-Kobo” organized by university students has actively performed various science communication activities in local community that mainly aim to stimulate interests of children and other generations into various fields of sciences and technologies for over 15 years. The activities of the project team are in out-of-curriculum basis. This means that the student members are not extrinsically motivated, but instead voluntarily involved in the activities. As a result, they are likely to have the same level of motivations and enthusiasms, leading to generally high qualities in the activities. As the supervisor of the activities, the author believes that the out-of-curriculum situation of the activities is critical for realizing such successful performances. For investigating actual attitudes of the student members towards involvement in the activities, questionnaires were provided in which among other questions, the student members were asked whether or not they were in favor of the situation of incorporating the activities into official education curriculum of the university so that the student members can get credits and/or improve their GPA scores through their participation in the activities. The obtained results showed that the majority of the student members believed that the activities should remain in the out-of-curriculum basis, similarly to the author’s opinion as the supervisor of the activities. Interestingly, the student members in higher grades (in other words, with longer period of experiences in the activities) were likely to be in more strongly favor of the out-of-curriculum situation. Longer period of participation in the activities makes the student members further believe that their intrinsic motivation is a key factor for achieving satisfactory and successful performances and results.