Network Shared Class with Stanford Universityduring 98-99

Abstract

Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology started to join the postgraduate design course ME210/ME310 at Stanford from the year 1998 by using a network. This course in run based on Project Based Learning. ME210 is a preparatory course for ME310,which is focused upon teaching students how to work together as a team and which was run from September to December, 98. An assignment of developing a paper bike was given. Three students formed a team on each side and they collaborated over the network alone. ME310 is a course with corporate partners. Corporate partners provides students real issues in their companies and students work together to solve the problem and to develop a prototype that demonstrates how effective their solutions are. In our case, Toyota provided an assignment to develop a parallel parking support system and they asked us to demonstrate its usefulness on a real car. How we could get over the cultural differences and how we could really achieve good teamworking across the national boundaries over the network will be discussed.