Does a communicative and friendly group work cause academic achievements in college students?

【Abstract】This study was undertaken to evaluate an implemented educational strategy in two academic courses. A questionnaire containing 29 items covering course content, learning environment, learning resources, quality of lecture delivery, friendly small group learning (FSGL), learning procedure and overall learning progress was originally designed and used in this survey. The Likert scale which is a type of rating scale was applied to measure students’ opinions about the educational plan. With this scale, students were asked to rate items on a level of agreement from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The statistical analysis manifested that the two groups of students significantly (p < 0.001) agreed that the educational strategy used in the two courses was a helpful learning method. The percentage of “agree” responses for course content and organization was 83.5 and 89.7% for pharmaceutical English Ⅰ, and Ⅱ, respectively. Group presentation was reported (74-87%) to be a helpful way to effectively study and learn. When students were asked about FSGL, 80% of them in each course showed a positive attitude toward this new educational concept (t-statistics = 7.3-7.6, p < 0.001). It was observed that 87.5% of the students in course Ⅰand 82.8% of those in course Ⅱindicated that having a group’s leader was beneficial in study progress. When responses of “strongly agree” and “agree” were combined and regarded as “agree” in data analysis, items such as self-study before attending the class, study motivation initiated by monthly tests, and group discussion were favored by more than 80% of the students. On the basis of the results obtained, it was concluded that the technique applied in this study is a helpful method in academic achievement. Further studies on the feasibility of the FSGL educational technique are required. [Mirbod SM, Sugiura H, Japanese Journal of Health Recreation, Vol. 16, pp 31-42, 2020