Faculty of Sports Sciences Students' Opinions on the Community Service Practice Course

Abstract

Educational institutions play a major role in meeting social needs and expectations. Particularly, the Community Service Practices (CSP) course within universities offers students the opportunity to engage in social activities with the community, to gain awareness of social responsibility, and to get to know the community from different perspectives. For this reason, this research was carried out to determine the opinions of the Faculty of Sport Sciences students who took the 'Community Service Practices' course before taking it and their gains after the course. A total of 53 students who were studying at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University Faculty of Sports Sciences and taking Community Service Practices course participated in the research. The research was applied in two parts as before and after the application. Before the application, the students were asked about their expectations about the CPS course in the form of open-ended questions and their answers were requested in writing. At the end of the application process, 14 people were determined to participate in the interview voluntarily, and focus group interviews were held with semi -structured questions. The questions directed to the students were recorded using the note-taking technique. The data obtained from the students' opinions were coded independently by two researchers by making descriptive and content analysis. As a result of the research, it is observed that the students show positive progress in terms of social awareness, social responsibility, communication, professional experience and cooperation with the CPS course in the university programs.