Taiki Yoshida

Introduction Qualitative information in the form of written reflection reports is vital for evaluating students’ progress in education. As a pilot study, we used text mining, which analyzes qualitative information with quantitative features, to investigate how rehabilitation students’ goals change during their first year at university. Methods We recruited 109 first-year students (66 physical therapy and 43 occupational therapy students) enrolled in a university rehabilitation course. These students completed an open-ended questionnaire about their learning goals at the time of admission and at 6 and 12 months after admission to the university. Text mining was used to objectively interpret the descriptive text data from all three-time points to extract frequently occurring nouns at once. Then, hierarchical cluster analysis was performed to generate clusters. The number of students who mentioned at least one noun in each cluster was counted and the percentages of students in each cluster were compared for the three periods using Cochran’s Q test. Results The 31 nouns that appeared 10 or more times in the 427 sentences were classified into three clusters: “Socializing,” “Practical Training,” and “Classroom Learning.” The percentage of students in all three clusters showed significant differences across the time periods (p < 0.001 for “Socializing”; p < 0.01 for “Practical Training” and “Classroom Learning”). Conclusion These findings suggest that the students’ learning goals changed during their first year of education. This objective analytical method will enable researchers to examine transitional trends in students’ reflections and capture their psychological changes, making it a useful tool in educational research.

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE This feasibility study aimed to investigate the feasibility of applying a motivational instructional design model to stroke rehabilitation and its potential physical and mental health effects in occupational and swallowing therapy settings. DESIGN An open-label, single-arm, feasibility study. SETTING Convalescent rehabilitation hospitals. PARTICIPANTS Twenty-five patients with stroke (19 males; mean age 62.4 ± 11.9 years) were recruited from two convalescent rehabilitation hospitals. INTERVENTIONS The intervention was to motivate participants during rehabilitation sessions based on the motivational instructional design model and was delivered to 12 and 13 participants in two hospitals during occupational and swallowing therapy sessions, respectively. The intervention was given for 40–60 min daily, 5 days weekly for 4 weeks (25 sessions). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The primary outcome was feasibility, including the drop-out rate, an adverse event, and the participants’ acceptability of the intervention. Additionally, physical (activities of daily living, motor function of the paretic upper extremity, and swallowing ability) and mental health (depressive symptoms and apathy) outcomes were evaluated before and after the intervention. RESULTS No participants dropped out of the intervention or experienced an adverse event. Twenty-one participants (84%) were satisfied with the intervention, and 19 (76%) hoped to continue receiving it. After the intervention, statistically significant improvements with a large effect size were found in physical outcomes (Cohen’s r = 0.68–0.85) but not in mental health outcomes (Cohen’s r = 0.31–0.34). CONCLUSIONS The application of the motivational instructional design model to occupational and swallowing therapies after stroke was feasible with the potential to improve physical outcomes.