The 10th Faculty of Engineering Education Symposium took place on the Katsura Campus with around 170 instructors in attendance, including 50 who joined remotely from the Yoshida Campus. Held annually since 2005 as part of a faculty development (FD) and mutual learning program for those teaching undergraduate engineering at Kyoto University, the event each year addresses topics based on surveys of students enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering.
The 2014 Education Symposium opened with remarks by Professor Shinzaburo Ito, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, followed by speeches by two guest speakers -- Professor Motomi Toichi from the Graduate School of Medicine and Associate Professor Hiroyuki Sakai from the Center for the Promotion of Excellence in Higher Education. Professor Toichi discussed the history and current state of psychiatric research of developmental disorders, with a focus on university developments, while Associate Professor Sakai's talk stressed open learning and effective classroom use of information and communication technologies.
Afterwards, three of the engineering faculty described the courses they taught and shared their strategies for keeping classes engaged and improving individual students' learning experiences. These presentations were followed by reports from Faculty of Engineering Professor Kenji Kimura, who chairs a committee on reform of engineering pedagogy, on the effects of limiting credit hours per student per semester as indicated by course registration and completion data, and on the findings from surveys of students on classroom teaching conducted over the past five years.
The 2014 Education Symposium proved a highly productive event, with the Q&A session also eliciting an enthusiastic response from attendees.
A lecture at the symposium
