The Relatinships between Students’ Satisfaction with the Designated Course of General Subject (Module) I and Their Academic Performance

This paper aims to examine the relationships between students’ satisfaction with designated courses of general subject and students’ academic performance in the courses. Nagasaki university changed its liberal arts education system in 2012. One of the most important changes was to introduce a new idea on liberal arts called “Module system”. The system aims to create "learning community" through packaged-subjects and to facilitate active learning methods. In this system, students are sorted by computerized lottery besed on students’ preference for the themes of “Module”. In consequence, some students are not allowed to take their desired course. Looking at students evaluation, we found that students had some complaints on the “Module system”. In this study, we analyzed the relationships between students' satisfaction with designated course of general subject, their academic performance, and their satisfaction with general education to figure out whether the “Module system” decreases students' motivation if they are not allow to take their desired course. Through the analyses, we found there were negative impacts on their academic performance and satisfaction with general education for students who are not allowed to take their first choice of courses. Some of the students stopped to attend the class, or got low grade. In conclusion, we suggest the need to reconsider the way of “Module system”