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Logo of bmcmeduBioMed Centralsearchsubmit a manuscriptregisterthis articleBMC Medical Education
 
BMC Med Educ. 2012; 12: 84.
Published online 2012 August 28. doi:  10.1186/1472-6920-12-84
PMCID: PMC3479041
Copyright ©2012 Nakagawa et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
Benefits of off-campus education for students in the health sciences: a text-mining analysis
Kazumasa Nakagawa,corresponding author1 Yasuyoshi Asakawa,2 Keiko Yamada,3 Mitsuko Ushikubo,2 Tohru Yoshida,2 and Haruyasu Yamaguchi2
1Faculty of Health Care, Takasaki University of Health and Welfare, Takasaki City, Gunma, JAPAN
2Graduate School of Health Sciences, Gunma University, Maebashi City, Gunma, JAPAN
3Comprehensive Regional Support Center, Western Part of Maebashi City, Gunma, JAPAN
corresponding authorCorresponding author.
Kazumasa Nakagawa: nakagawa-ka/at/takasaki-u.ac.jp; Yasuyoshi Asakawa: yasakawa/at/health.gunma-u.ac.jp; Keiko Yamada: yamada-keiko/at/vanilla.ocn.ne.jp; Mitsuko Ushikubo: ushi2/at/health.gunma-u.ac.jp; Tohru Yoshida: hsyoshida/at/gunma-u.ac.jp; Haruyasu Yamaguchi: yamaguti/at/health.gunma-u.ac.jp
Received June 25, 2012; Accepted August 22, 2012.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background
In Japan, few community-based approaches have been adopted in health-care professional education, and the appropriate content for such approaches has not been clarified. In establishing community-based education for health-care professionals, clarification of its learning effects is required. A community-based educational program was started in 2009 in the health sciences course at Gunma University, and one of the main elements in this program is conducting classes outside school. The purpose of this study was to investigate using text-analysis methods how the off-campus program affects students.
Methods
In all, 116 self-assessment worksheets submitted by students after participating in the off-campus classes were decomposed into words. The extracted words were carefully selected from the perspective of contained meaning or content. With the selected terms, the relations to each word were analyzed by means of cluster analysis.
Results
Cluster analysis was used to select and divide 32 extracted words into four clusters: cluster 1—“actually/direct,” “learn/watch/hear,” “how,” “experience/participation,” “local residents,” “atmosphere in community-based clinical care settings,” “favorable,” “communication/conversation,” and “study”; cluster 2—“work of staff member” and “role”; cluster 3—“interaction/communication,” “understanding,” “feel,” “significant/important/necessity,” and “think”; and cluster 4—“community,” “confusing,” “enjoyable,” “proactive,” “knowledge,” “academic knowledge,” and “class.”
Conclusions
The students who participated in the program achieved different types of learning through the off-campus classes. They also had a positive impression of the community-based experience and interaction with the local residents, which is considered a favorable outcome. Off-campus programs could be a useful educational approach for students in health sciences.
Keywords: Community-based education, School of health sciences, Early exposure, Role model, Text-mining methods
Articles from BMC Medical Education are provided here courtesy of
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