An Investigation into the Planning of Community University in Kinmen County in Response to People''''s Demands

• Main Authors: Yu-chin Wu, 吳友欽
• Other Authors: 蔡培村
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/62512464642529966984

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 成人教育研究所 === 91 === This study is based on the experiences of setting up community university in Taiwan and the features of these community university. The demands of the general public in the area of Kinmen are also considered, so that a blueprint of the ideal community college for the people of Kinmen can be produced. The aims of this research are fourfold: 1. Reviewing the experiences of setting up community university in Taiwan and their characteristics to serve as examples to be emulated by the founding project of community university in Kinmen 2. Exploring the consolidated opinions of the people of Kinmen regarding the establishment of community university 3. Investigating the nature of the demands of the Kinmen residents for community university and their willingness to take courses on offer 4. Based on the results of this research, proposing a feasible plan for establishing community university in Kinmen able to meet the demands of the local people Questionnaire survey is the primary methodology for this research. First a descriptive analysis was done on the collection of relevant literature. Factors affecting the planning of community university were subsequently identified. The questionnaire was sent to a random sampling of 1100 Kinmen residents, and a total of 826 eligible responses were collected -- the rate of eligible returns were as high as 75.09%. The nature of the Kinmen residents’ demands for community university were then analyzed based on the questionnaire responses. Suggestions were made based on the result of the analysis for planning community university in Kinmen. The primary results of this research are as follows: 1. The experiences and of setting up community university in Taiwan for the past five years and the university’ special features were extracted as references for planning community university in Kinmen. 2. The urgency of the demand can be seen from the fact that as many as 94.3% of Kinmen residents considered it necessary to establish community university. 85.1% local people expressed their willingness to enrol in courses offered if community university were established, revealing their strong motivation for learning. 3. It was thought that the initial areas covered by Kinmen’s community university should be education concerning women, recreation and life adaptation of senile people. 4. Residents of Kinmen held that dedicated campuses for community university should be located by the county government or local governments. 5. Residents of Kinmen considered newspaper advertisements and television reports the ideal means for promoting community university. 6. Residents of Kinmen thought the ideal class times to be the evenings of weekdays and the daytime of weekends. 7. Residents of Kinmen thought that the initial curriculum of community university in Kinmen should center around the arts and skills for daily life. 8. Residents of Kinmen thought that types of community college class activities should include visiting, interviewing, and field investigations which involve on-the-spot observation and hands-on learning. 9. Residents of Kinmen considered it appropriate to employ professors from regular university and universities as instructors of community university. 10. The highest rate of Kinmen residents thought community university could assist them in obtaining various vocational licences. 11. Residents of Kinmen thought it best that the tuition fees of community university be shared between personal funding and government sponsorship. 12. A feasible plan for blueprinting the establishment of community university for the county of Kinmen was proposed. The following suggestions are made in accordance with the research results: 1. Suggestions regarding the planning of Kinmen community university (1) The county government of Kinmen should set up community university in a speedy manner to meet the urgent requirement of the general public. (2) Since women and senile persons are the two dominant groups in the constituents of future community university of Kinmen, motivational factors should be provided to encourage their participation. (3) The main campus of the Kinmen community university should be set up at Wujiang Academy in Jincheng town in the first instance. Subsequent years should see the founding of more college branches in the remaining towns of Kinmen. (4) The establishment of community university should be advertised through the channels of Kinmen Daily News or television news, so as to make it known to the general public and to attract enrolments. (5) Kinmen community university should offer diversified class times so as to meet the different needs of local people. (6) The curriculum design of Kinmen community university should be centered around skills and competency for daily living, historical events of war zones, culture and tourism, in the first instance, and gradually migrated to a three-way balance between the above curricula, club-activity based curricula, and curricula of academic disciplines. Care should be taken in planning these courses. (7) The teaching of Kinmen community university should be conducted in the manner of on-the-spot observation, hands-on operation, and community-based activities. E-buses especially designed to administer community learning should be purchased in order to deliver the teaching and learning materials to the doors of the community and promote life-long learning. (8) Kinmen community university should recruit a multi-dimensional body of lecturers, with a supporting distance learning platform to supplement the inadequacy of academic faculty members in the beginning. (9) Kinmen community university should design a miscellaneous range of proofs of learning to help achieve the goal of disseminating higher education, which in turn will help reshape the current diploma-based ideology about education. (10) In the beginning, Kinmen community university should attempt to attract minority groups with low tuition fees so as to achieve the goal of benefiting the community. 2. Suggestions regarding further research (1) Research by questionnaire survey and research by action should continue and evaluation of achievements should be made. (2) Research should be directed toward an equal emphasis on quality and quantity. Keywords: community university, skills and competency for living, club-activity based curriculum, academic courses, dedicated community learning e-bus, distance learning