A Preliminary Study of the Impact of Community-Based Education on university students’ post-graduation outcomes

Many universities offer community-based education incorporating fieldwork. The effects of this type of education have been evaluated before and after the classes. However, few studies have been conducted on the effects of graduation. To gain a deeper understanding of the effects of community-based education, long-term research is necessary. 　This study focuses on the long-term effects of community-based education by surveying 201 graduates who have been working since their first year after graduation from a university laboratory that has been conducting fieldwork activities in the community since 2005. An online questionnaire was administered to 172 of these graduates who were contacted. The survey consisted of questions about the activities during their university lives that led them to learn about the community, along with open-ended questions about how this learning has benefited them since graduation. The survey was conducted from December １ to December 18, 2022, and 148 students responded (86% response rate). This represented 73.6% of all graduates. Additionally, a survey was conducted among faculty advisors. The faculty advisors were asked to rate the degree to which graduates were involved in the community during their university life on a ５-point scale from their advisor's perspective. The survey was conducted in January 2023. 　The results of the survey showed that 123 of 148 respondents indicated that they had learned about the community through the activities of this laboratory. Among the various laboratory activities, it was ongoing community activities over a long period that the graduates felt they had learned from the community. This suggests that community activities that retain their impressions even after graduation are not one-off activities but continuous ones. 　The free-writing responses of the graduates who indicated that they had learned from the community during their university lives were examined using the Structural Topic Model (STM). However, in a preliminary study, the number of topics was set to three for ease of interpretation. The result showed that the topics“ Topic 1 (communication opportunities),”“ Topic 2 (local information),” and “Topic 3 (awareness within the community)” were extracted from the free-writing responses. Graduates who attended community-based education believed that these topics were useful. 　The percentage of topic occurrence was significantly dependent on the number of years since graduation. When they were new to the workforce, they had the tendency to talk more about topics 1 and 2, but as they aged, they tend to focus more on topic 3. The results suggest that while practical skills, such as communication and local information, are important when they are new to the workforce, as they gain more experience in the workforce, the theoretical learning gained from studying community revitalization becomes more important. Graduates whose advisors judged that they were deeply involved in the community tended to talk more about Topic 1, whereas students who were less frequently involved in the community tendedto talk more about Topic 2. The results suggest that students who were more deeply involved in the community improved their communication skills and felt that these skills were useful once they entered the workforce.