ABSTRACT
1)The Human Communications course at Tottori University is composed of two elements: "experiential learning to raise awareness," which encourages students to reconsider human relationships in daily life and their own way of life, and "experience involving infants," which helps students to practice what they have learned through these intergenerational relations. In the present study, questionnaires were administered to students to examine the effectiveness of this course.<br>2)The survey results suggested that the Human Communications course facilitated the cultivation of self–concept in communication and of self–acceptance, particularly among students whose scores were less than the mean on the first day of the course.<br>3)Establishing a support system for interpersonal relationships and improving methods to assess the effects of the course are challenges for future work.
ABSTRACT
Teaching evaluations have been performed since 2002 in the Faculty of Medicine, Tottori University. The effects of evaluations over a 3-year period were assessed, and free comments obtained from students were analyzed with the textmining method to identify factors affecting students' satisfaction. A total of 566 lectures given in undergraduate courses were evaluated, and 33, 751 questionnaires were collected for a recovery rate of 74%. The collected questionnaires included 2495 free comments. Each free comment was parsed word by word, and the nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs were selected as key words. The scores for almost all questions on the questionnaire for the 2003 school year were significantly higher than those for the 2002 school year. However, no difference was found between the scores of the 2003 and 2004 school years. Analysis of the free comments suggested that a well-understood lecture improves student satisfaction and that teaching materials, such as handouts and slides, play an important role in the positive evaluation of lectures. The percentage of lectures receiving poor evaluations (scores less than 3) decreased yearly. This finding suggests that teaching evaluations are effective in helping faculty members with low scores to improve their lectures.