2019 Volume 7 Issue 2 Pages 14-21
Osaka University has implemented a practical internship called the Coupling Internship (CIS) since 2015 supported by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. CIS is conducted with mixed participants from Osaka University and overseas universities from both humanities and engineering majors. During the 2-week-long group internship at a Japanese manufacturing firm, students with diverse backgrounds work together to propose findings and solutions to the firm’s problems. This unique teamwork among mixed-background students provides variouslessons for the participants. This pa per attempts to compare the recognition of humanities and engineering students toward their roles and learning through the CIS activities based on the responses of a Post-Questionnaire conducted at the completion of the program. The results show that the roles played between humanities andengineering students during teamwork differ, and learning tends to differ between the two. Also, from this comparative study, it is found that humanities and engineering students learn different strengths in each other which helps them to recognize what factors need to be improved regarding their own abilities.
