A case study : patterns of freshman welcoming activities at faculty of Liberal Arts, Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon

Abstract

The study entitled “A Case Study: Patterns of Freshman Welcoming Activities at Faculty of Liberal Arts, Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon”, a mixedmethod research, aims to investigate the patterns, effects, and students ’attitudes towards freshman welcoming activities. The participants in this study were the first- to the fourth-year university students from four majors, including Applied Thai, English for International Communication, Hotel Management, and Tourism. The participants can be divided into two groups: the participants of freshman welcoming activities (the first-year university students, N = 132) and the organizers (the second-year to the fourth-year university students, N = 65). The participants were 197 university students in total. The research instruments used for data collection were questionnaire and depth interview questions. For the questionnaire, it can be divided into four parts: Part I concerning general information, Part II and III related to types of welcoming activities and students’ attitudes towards the freshman welcoming activities organized in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon, and Part IV providing suggestions. Thirty voluntary participants were asked to provide in-depth information about freshman welcoming activities organized the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon. The data obtained from the questionnaires were analyzed by using descriptive statistics: frequency, percentage, means and standard deviation. The data obtained from the in-depth interview were transcribed and analyzed by using textual analysis. Most participants in this study were female university students whose age group was 19 years old. The participants filled in their answers from 1 to 5, that is, 5 strongly agree, 4 agree, 3 neutral, 2 disagree, and 1 strongly disagree to report their attitudes towards the freshman welcoming activities organized in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon. The results of the study show that the participants highly agreed with the appropriateness and the types of freshman welcoming activities, responding to the goals. The participants also added that they wanted to have a welcome feast (71.6%), followed by Baisri Sukwan welcome ceremony (64%) and booming activity for welcoming the new first-year university students (55.8%) respectively. The results of the study showed the participants ’awareness of security and willingness while taking part in the freshman welcoming activities. The students mostly agreed with positive effects of participating these kinds of activities: building relationship, unity, and responsibility. However, they also moderately agreed that these activities could provide negative effectives: individual and organizational damage (for example, losing publica image) According to the descriptive analysis and textual analysis, the results showed that these university students were willing to take part in freshman welcome activities, indicating that the activities were suitable, supervised by related departments. They also suggested that there should be welcome activities based on their interests and suggestion box to achieve the goal. However, one of the limitations of the study was the widespread of coronavirus resulting in the average score and standard deviation in some questionnaire items.