Structural mechanics is one of the subjects to be hard to understand for students in engineering field. It is the reason why they have poor images against mechanical phenomena. This paper describes ideas and the presentation of software program to make for students possible to image mechanical phenomena by using computer visualization, and the effects applied it to lecture of the structural mechanics. The newly developed system shows visual representations such as deformation, bending moment diagram and bending stress distribution along the axis of the structural member, and compares them with those of another types of structure or under another loading. The application to the education takes great effect for students to understand with more precision in imaging the mechanical phenomena.

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An experimental program has been carried out to send students to companies and agencies in Asian countries as internship trainees. The purpose of the program is to provide an opportunity for students to have a global viewpoint and skills as prospective engineers. The program consists of pre- and post-studies together with the internship where studies are carried out the survey and discussions on the Asian countries, "manufacture abroad" of Japanese companies and on some top-ics chosen by students. The program is untraditional engineering education. Its outcomes are all positive especially in training of communication skill, problem-based studies and self-studies. Methodology or evaluation for such untraditional engineering education are necessary for further development.

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The department of electro-mechanical systems engineering in TNCT consists of three basic fields ; mechanical, electronical and control engineering. The purpose of our department is to train the engineer who can integrate these fields and construct the synthetic systems like mechatronics systems. This paper describes the content of case study on "Mechatronics System Design" class. This is the practical curriculum to teach our students a process from conceptual design, through detail design and production, to documentation. One of the subjects of this curriculum is a contest of autonomous robots. And we made students organize project teams in order to achieve their subject during the fixed term and collaborate with other members more easily. Through this curriculum, many educational advantages were obtained.

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A trouble with our students in their course study is that they feel great difficulty to understand the scientific and technical subject, which is originated from lack of practical experience. In order to obtain a better grasp of scientific and technical knowledge, it is also necessary to know the development process as actual evidences. We have planed lectures to give such practical knowledge and actual evidence addressed by the skilled craftsmen who understood nature by their own sense and had a specific skill for manufacture. The lectures were found to bring on the good intension of trying their study harder and get a great interest to search for truth, which we did not expected. We also summarize the future plan.

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Thesis project plays the most important role in bachelor's engineering education in Japan. But so far in most engineering program, the evaluation of achievement in thesis project deeply depends on the subjective opinion of the supervisor. It is required to have more clear and objective criteria for the evaluation. Three engineering departments in Okayama University, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering and, Systems Engineering, received trial accreditation visits in 2001 and full accreditation visits in 2002, respectively, and are accredited by JABEE. These departments independently established their ways and criteria for evaluation of thesis project and have presented them to the JABEE visit teams, respectively, in the accreditation process. The systems also include criteria to evaluate achieved abilities to consider effects of engineering subjects on human society, engineering ethics, and methods to count hours spent for thesis project. This paper reports these evaluation ways and criteria.

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In order to develop the creativity of students, a problem/project based learning (PBL) program collaborated with local enterprise was introduced in department of mechanical engineering of Tottori University from April 1, 2002. In this report, the outline of the education program and the preliminary attempt of PBL project, which had been held in academic year of 2002, are described. The PBL can give intellectual curiosity, self-initiative and creativity to the students. To complete the PBL program, however, there still have been several problems from the aspect of human resources, facilities and budget.

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This report is concerned with an educational approach to interest junior high school students in science and engineering technology. We supposed that robotics technology was one of the main interest for junior high school students, so the plan was carried out by using Lego Mindstorms. The subscription of participants was performed in neighboring junior high schools and a prefectural scientific experience institution, etc. After explanations for elementary robotics and usage of Lego Mindstorms, line trace robots were assembled on their ideas. In this report, the implementation and results of participants' questionnaire are described.

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Graduation research is a comprehensive activity among several design subjects composed in a four-year undergraduate course. The design subjects in a curriculum demand several abilities such as (1) collection and application of information, (2) creativity, (3) problem finding, (4) group activities and (5) presentation. These abilities can be assessed and promoted by practicing presentations. This paper deals with the way of presentation assessment in the activities of graduation research and its development through 2000, 2001 and 2002 academic years. A coalition consisting of five seminar groups began to develop the presentation assessment. This assessment was then extended to the whole engineering departments in Tokushima University. It was clarified that the presentation assessment in activities of graduation work is an effective method to promote presentation ability and self-studying skill of the students.

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A synthetic engineering seminar, one subject of the major curriculum of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Yamaguchi University, motivated three undergraduates to carry out voluntary instruction to primary school students. Three educational winches, a uni-shaft winch, a two-shaft winch, and a three-shaft winch, were designed and produced in the seminar. The second and third winches function with 1/3 and 1/8 gear reduction ratios. Consequently, the first winch gives the highest lifting speed while the third winch lifts the heaviest load. To encourage interest in science and machines, a voluntary course was held by three undergraduates using those produced three winches : 158 Kami-Ube Elementary School students residing in Ube-city, Yamaguchi prefecture attended the course on March 4, 2003. A post-course survey showed that 90% of the children were impressed by the course. More than 50% of the children were interested in science and machines. This fact leads us to discuss the subject of building a major curriculum including voluntary instruction or service to the local community.

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In the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Okayama University, the manufacturing practice has been taken as an important subject, not only for educational manufacturing practice but also for introducing "Hands-on" fabrication. Therefore, this class was shifted from the second to the first grade year. Furthermore, the manufacturing of a simple shaped paperweight was altered to a complicated product, gyroscope. The analysis of questionnaire shows that the improvements in the subject are very effective in student's motivation for Hands-on fabrication. We hope that this subject will be a trigger for students to develop a creative ability.

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Although PID control schemes are mainly used in lots of process industries, engineers desire to employ the advanced control theory, in order to obtain more highly efficient control performances. However, there are few cases where the advanced control theory is employed for real systems, because the theoretical framework of the advanced control is so difficult for them to understand and the cost to implement is quit expensive. Therefore, the engineers have compromised with the inadequate control performance. In this paper, contents required in training the advanced control engineers are first formulated, and the effective education program to train them is developed by considering the advanced control based on the classical PID control. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the education program is evaluated on the practice.

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There is an increasing concern about 'creative manufacturing education' due to the changing situation around the manufacturing industries in Japan. It attracts attentions in particular to the subject 'Problem-Based Learning' in a variety of engineering institutions, expected to be able to enhance students' active participation and also their creativity. The Yonago National College of Technology is introducing 'Synthetic Practice on Design and Manufacturing' for the fifth grade of the Mechanical Engineering Department students. To introduce the comprehensive education such as conceptual planning, designing, drawing, machining, assembling, evaluating and reviewing, make up for a deficiency of old education style. It brings in the progress for student's practical application of the knowledge of the specialized subjects. We think it could help student obtain the systematic understanding of the specialized subjects. It was also find that there is a care such as any students are easy to make mistakes in the process of designing and drawing.

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In order to cultivate the intellectual creativity, courses named Creative Thinking and Creative Production have been introduced in our college since 1995. However, they have not provided the students with a learning environment where they can study a series of steps for product development. This report describes the attempt and the effect of the course in which the students learned how to develop a product with single-chip computer PIC device while experiencing the process of product development from planning, drafting a design to producing. This course aims to help the students improve the ability to combine and organize their technologies and knowledge of machine control engineering and it is offered as a compilation of mechatronics engineering educations.

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