HASEGAWA Masashi

Participation of residents is essential to promote local projects. A questionnaire was conducted on residents in Miyano area, Yamaguchi City for planning local community development. The aim of this study was to uncover factors for willingness to cooperate in local projects from analysis of the results of the questionnaire. Aid for people who are unable to go shopping, activity to watch over children, development of environment to raise children and anticrime measures were much-needed projects. Relations among neighbors were found to be a factor affecting willingness to cooperate in these projects. Our results suggest that improving relations among residents may lead to increased willingness to cooperate, resulting in enhancement of local community development.

Undergraduate nursing students are required to acquire practical skills, and many of them may experience learning difficulties. However, the relationship between learning difficulties and motivation for pursuing nursing or vocational views remains unclear. In this study, a questionnaire was administered to 92 undergraduate nursing students to determine the influences of their motivation for pursuing nursing and vocational views on learning difficulties. Our results showed that students whose motivation for applying was “because someone recommended me” had difficulty understanding the lecture content. Those who answered “yes” to the item “a career in nursing would help me become my ideal self” found it difficult to acquire practical skills because of fewer opportunities but did not have difficulty balancing their academic and personal lives. Our findings suggest the need to consider measures to support nursing students’ learning by focusing on the motivation for applying for nursing and the vocational views on their learning difficulties.

The use of the Internet and digital devices may encourage social interactions among the elderly. However, the utilization rate of smartphones and other digital devices is not very high among the elderly. A questionnaire was administered to 119 elderly people aged 65 years or older to determine the association between smartphone usage frequency and the frequency of social interactions among them. Our results discovered that 83.2% of the elderly respondents used smartphones. Those who reported using their smartphones more frequently had fewer instances of social isolation and greater numbers of social interactions with others. Our findings also revealed a significant association between the frequency of using social networking services (SNS) on smartphones and the number of social interactions among the elderly. Our findings indicated that the use of smartphones as a means of communication may lead to more social interactions among elderly people.

An online questionnaire was administered to 143 university students to clarify their perception of the elderly and its related factors. Consequently, the elderly that formed the basis of the students’ perception regarding older adults were in the following order: “grandparents” > “the elderly in the community” ≥“the elderly in various media.” Furthermore, the students’ perception of the older adults was related to “frequent contact with grandparents,” “quarrel with grandparents,” “pleasant activity with the elderly in the community,” “training session offered by the elderly in the community,” “experience of being scolded by the elderly in the community,” “contents of various media for respect for the elderly,” and “contents of various media for the care of the elderly.” Our findings suggest that experiences with grandparents and older people in the community and various media may play an essential role in having a more positive perception of the elderly for students.

Based on a paper aimed to document the pioneering use of Blended Learning and Instructional Design published in March 2021, an attempt was made to improve one compulsory subject in the Postgraduate Schools of YPU. The goal of improving the class called ‘Quality of Life (QOL)’ was to show a model to be used at Postgraduate level for mostly adult learners so that they could access the class from their workplaces or homes. The construction of the whole class needed to be reviewed, instead of just utilizing an interactive online ICT tool. This paper also tries to present an idea for a certificate program based on the above QOL class. Yamaguchi Prefectural University promotes four educational principles, including “respect for human nature,” “emphasis on citizens’ perspectives,” “co-existence with the community,” and “response to globalization”. The focus on humanities is crystalized on the teaching subject, QOL, as mentioned above. ‘Quality of Life’ covers the examination of the quality of everyday life in today’s changing world to diverse life stages, and then into every type of lives in nature and around the globe. By placing the QOL class as the core and adding one or two classes, it is assumed that the certificate course could be started by connecting issues in local towns to innovative solutions in wider society.