Consumer credit education at Japanese colleges and universities is not meeting the requirements of the business world. As a small step to improve the situation, the authors planned a lecture on consumer credit at Den-en Chofu Gakuen University within the course of International Business education. However there was a problem, international business and consumer credit are usually taught separately. As a compromise, only one lecture hour could be allotted to the consumer credit lesson.
This arrangement led to another problem. If education is regarded as an intentional and planned activity to transform the way of thinking and the behavior of people on a continuous basis, only little can be expected from a one-time lesson. In a view to solving this problem, the authors have developed an “ABG lecture” model with the purpose of motivating the students for their life-long continuous study.
The lecture based on the ABG education model was held on October 24, 2002. Before closing the lecture, the attending students were requested to mention their impressions/opinions on this credit lecture. Generally speaking, their comments were in favor of this lecture, saying that they had been informed of the function and dangers of the credit system and this knowledge would sure be of help in future. Those comments confirmed educational effects produced on the students on the emotional side.
The authors held an investigation 3 and 6 weeks later on the educational effects made on the cognitive side, viz. how much knowledge the students obtained from the lecture.
The questionnaires were delivered to and collected from 138 students, 70 of which had attended the ABG credit lecture and the rest who had not. The result showed, that there was not much difference between both groups of students as regards the specific items questioned. Nevertheless, this experiment, as a whole, could be evaluated positively, since the students have been made interested in consumer credit issues and motivated for life-long continuous study.
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