The purpose of this study is to develop a life education curriculum, and to test its effectiveness in increasing college students' positive awareness of people's sufferings. This study followed a quasi-experimental pre-test and post-test design with 49 and 58 participants in the experimental and control group respectively. Participants in the experimental group were involved in a curriculum made up of 10-sessions. Each session was composed of two hours learning activities. The instruments used included the following: the Awareness of Suffering Scale (Chang, 2007), Self-report Altruism Scale by Rushton, Chrisjohn, and Fekken (1981), and the Empathy on Perspective-taking Stories Scale by Chao and Chung (2004). Independent t test, ANCOVA, and hierarchical regression analyses were applied to analyze the data. Results indicated positive change of the participants in the experimental group. Improvements included the reduced level of the "cursing and blaming," "character attribution," "legalism," and an increased level on "caring and self reflection" and "human nature attribution." In addition, there was a positive change on the expressive domain of empathy. The cognitive and emotional domains of empathy, and the level of altruistic behaviors were not improved by the present intervention. Conclusions and recommendations are listed for further development of life education curriculum as well as for future studies.
