Study of science high school students’ perceptions on overseas field research

Students at the high school for those gifted in science do various extracurricular activities in addition to subject-related activities such as those in the AP curriculum. Compared to other extracurricular activities, overseas field research (OFR) has been recognized as costly and time-consuming, which brings about the issue of the effectiveness of the program, which may be due to the absence of a de facto study on the effectiveness of the OFR. The aim of this work is to study the effectiveness of OFR by examining science high school students’ perceptions of OFR. In this work, we used questionnaires and interviews to survey students about their awareness of OFR in order to investigate the effect of OFR on students’ academic careers, students’ satisfaction with the program, and students’ suggestions for program improvement. According to the survey, students’ career decisions were not affected much by OFR. While most students were satisfied with OFR, they also asked for more flexibility in the schedule and for an extension of free time. As a result, we found that students experiencing OFR had positive images of OFR, although it requires a large budget.