Attitude change to risk and effect of virtual risk communication group work in a university lecture of teacher training course

Virtual risk communication group works were conducted in two classes of a university lecture for Special Activities in teacher training course. In an experiment class, Zig-saw method, in which the participants were assigned either to school teachers, junior high school students, or their guardians and were instructed to share information and to exchange opinions about risk of hiking in an area where there had been a fatal accident and to make decision whether they should cancel the hiking or not in next year. In a comparison class, it was instructed to make an information leaflet for mountain hiking for students and their guardians. Before and after the group works, a questionnaire consists of nine items which related to attitude toward risk and its communication, and free description about impression of the exercise were conducted. Eight items excluding one items which had very low communality were categorized into three factors; evasion of risk", "sharing risk information", and "challenging value of risk". Although no clear tendency of effect of the group works were found both among the experimental and the comparison groups, roles in role play group work influenced "evasion of risk" and "importance of sharing information". From frequency analysis of the words and text mining, the experimental group tended to attend to hardship of communicating and letting guardians assent the risk and value of the activity while the comparison group tended to attend to communicating and to letting guardians understand value and goal of the activity. In both groups, importance of risk communication and reduction of anxiety among guardians, thus obtaining guardians' cooperation for reducing risk was realized.