Educational Effects for University Students Through Multiple-Years Participation in Out-of-Curriculum Project Activities

Abstract

The out-of-curriculum project team “Rika-Kobo” organized by university student members has actively performed various activities for over 10 years in local community that mainly aim to stimulate interests of children and other generations into various fields of sciences and technologies. The activities of the project team are in out-of-curriculum basis, which means the student members are voluntarily involved in. Thus, they are likely to have the same level of motivations and enthusiasms, leading to generally high qualities in the activities. Through several questionnaires for the student members, participation experiences into the activities of this student project team has been found to be very effective for the student members to achieve and/or improve various skills and abilities such as communication skill, collaboration, leadership, scheduling ability as well as problem finding & solving skill. In addition, their participations can also serve as desirable opportunities for allowing them to realize the fact that certain skills/abilities are required to be achieved and improved. Thus, although their out-of-curriculum basis, the activities of this student project team can become an effective educational and training scheme for university students as future researchers and engineers. In this paper, for the purpose of further investigating any possible educational effects achievable from the activities, based on the results of questionnaires for the student members conducted over several years, some build-up effects for achievements and improvements of their skills and abilities will be discussed, which can be realized through participation into the activities over multiple years.