2023 Volume 10 Pages 1-20
As many new issues are arising in current days, it is necessary to educate students so they can cope with these issues based on multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills. The University of Danang - University of Science and Technology – (DUT) in Vietnam and Utsunomiya University (UU) in Japan have been holding annual workshops from 2018 to 2022. This approach aimed to create opportunities for students to acquire new knowledge, skills, experience with students from a different country, culture and discipline. The main purpose of this paper is to review the process and the output of the workshops, whether they were relevant to developing and enhancing students’ knowledge and abilities for urban planning and other academic skills, to confirm the possibility of addressing various socio-economic issues in today’s society.
As for the method, the authors analyze the series of five workshops by a questionnaire survey to the students and evaluate them from the aspect of their specialties. The authors found that responses differed according to students’ nationality, the venue of the workshop, and how the workshop was held. However, on the whole, the workshops proved to be a good opportunity for students to learn new things. From the point of view of faculty, the students performed favorably. Nonetheless, some suggestions were raised for improvement of future workshops.
As a conclusion, the workshops were all in all successful in developing human resources in urban planning, as students acquired knowledge not only by reading or listening like in a classroom, but also by communicating, discussing, seeing and observing actual sites, and exchanging ideas and thoughts with students from a different country and discipline.
