COMMUNITY KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDE ABOUT COMMUNITY BASED EDUCATION (CBE) PRACTICES OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Community-based education is a set of instructional activities that use the community extensively as a learning environment. Many institutions are not involving the community in Community-based education program evaluation and the community feels that the program is being imposed upon them, rather than being available to them. So, this research extracted out knowledge and attitude of the community towards University students’ community practices. A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted on 394 households. Systematic sampling technique with structured questioner was applied and finally, data was collected and analyzed. From 394 individuals interviewed 52.3% had good knowledge and 58.1% had a good attitude on community-based education practices. Educated respondents, respondents whose occupation was student and government employee, and respondents who were household head and spouse were more likely to have good knowledge. Similarly, students and government employees were also more likely to have a good attitude. Three out of five respondents have a good attitude and slightly greater than half had good knowledge on community-based education practices. To increase the popularity of the program as a strategy, awareness creation for community members, formulating discussion periods with focal persons as a means of regularly evaluating students’ activities, and encouraging the community members to participate in the practice at large should be needed.