‘Active Learning’, in which Students autonomically act, is necessary for awaking ‘Emotional Human Power’, which is the origin of Autonomy and Creativity. Intensive Training within short duration, for example continuing two days, is effective for the ‘Active Learning’.

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We had experienced the great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake disaster around ten years ago. Recently, the succession of disaster memory to the next generation becomes an important action-assignment. Since the occurrence of huge earthquake is expected in the near future, it is important to teach widely the lesson of the great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake disaster to the next generation, and this educational activity is also important for the disaster mitigation strategy in Japan. In this project, the accumulated data of disaster memory can be utilized to construct the educational system for earthquake disaster, and the collaboration between Kobe University, local government, city, civic group and media organization can be exploited to characterize the educational system of earthquake disaster mitigation.

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Almost all engineers who were born during the postwar several years should have done their best merely to support themselves and Japanese people and to reconstruct Japan just as a servant of the public. After having reached the summit of economy followed by achieving “Japan as No. 1” based upon their such reckless hard-working results, they unexpectedly encountered the collapse of the bubble economy, even worse, with a variety of engineering-orientated industries-based environmental issues. As one of such engineers, upon deep reflection, the author would like to advise that the younger generation engineers in this 21st century should do their best efforts to evolve society for better future on the basis of their own future-oriented decision. To do this, engineers should be more flexible in thinking and learn widely out of their specialty. Based upon experience, the author also wants to offer them some ideas like on what basis a decision is made, how symbolic characters on engineering substitutes should be, what is engineering fact, how to verify the engineering fact, the importance of “and” instead of “or” or the concept of “4 : 4 : 2” for them to fulfill their engineer's missions in a better way.

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An early exposure subject entitled “Introduction to Electrical and Electronic Engineering” is offered to first-year students in the school of electrical and electronic engineering of Kyoto University. Student groups visit one of the related laboratories and collect materials to describe activities of the laboratory in class presentation and a report. Students are required to talk actively to professors and graduate students in the laboratory. This is a good opportunity for students to think about their future studies.

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Advances in our engineering lab-course particularly designed for educating semiconductor technology utilizing the clean-room facilities in Osaka Institute of Technology are described. The facilities in “New Materials Research Center”, were founded in 1987 with the aid of financial support to private institutions from MEXT, and have been devoted not only for the research on the physics and device applications of new materials but for the unique and practical education program for undergraduate students. It was found that many of the students were satisfied with the education program. We also report an extensive project of our lab-course which widely covers the trainings from material characterization to device fabrication techniques together with the lectures.

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In order to educate independent and creative study, Wakayama University started “Systems Engineering Independent Study” when Faculty of Systems Engineering was established in 1996. Developing this education, Wakayama University established Student Center for Independent Research in the Sciences. This center treats various programs to encourage university students as well as pupils in the local community. In this paper, these activities and the evaluation are introduced.

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“Creative Exercise” is one of the most important articles in the course of technology educations at the universities and the colleges. In this paper, some trials for the creative exercises developed in Osaka Electro-Communication University are introduced ; those are (1) exercises in “Creative Design Engineering”, (2) studies and educations on robots, (3) executive plan of rescue-robot contest, and (4) supporting system for application for the qualifying examinations. Their results and effectiveness are also discussed.

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This paper describes a PBL course “Introductory Design Project” at Mechanical Engineering Course, Osaka University. Students are expected to learn problem solving on their own initiative, team working, project management, and presentation by practicing the whole product development process from conceptual design to manufacturing and evaluation. For teaching the proper product development process, we guided students to practice each stage of the process in a stepwise manner. The subjects are “jumping machine” and “damping device.” The course was successful, since many students felt that they had learned importance of conceptual design, team working, and project management. On the other hand, experts from industry advised us to encourage application of theoretical knowledge (e.g., theoretical evaluation of design results and improvements) .

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Problem Based Leaning in School of Engineering Science, Osaka University is being achieved mainly focusing on the spontaneous setting of the project theme. The PBL program aims to promote students' wide variety of abilities ; communication skill, group discussion, presentation skill, mutual assessment of the students, and also especially research skill 3P (Plan-Perform-Publish) .

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Some Japanese universities have been executing engineering design education intended for educational reforms in engineering. However, the Faculty of Engineering at Kyoto University proposes that academic abilities expected in such a curriculum be supplemented with graduation research, experiment subjects, practice subjects, or other programs. Therefore, engineering design education for first- and second-year students is not newly started in the university. To grasp the educational effects of this policy, a questionnaire survey was conducted for seniors who completed the graduation research. The structure of contributions for the graduation research (competence for “experts”, “human relations”, and “expression”) was extracted using factor analysis. Moreover, it was clarified that academic abilities expected in engineering design education are nearly supplemented with graduation research and other types of subjects, including experiments and practice subjects.

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This paper presents the results of the designing and producing lesson for an autonomous robot, which nurture designing ability and team's power. From the results of the student questionnaire on self-achievement, it is shown that this school lesson is useful to cultivate the creativity of students.

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Since 2004, Nara National College of Technology has been conducting “The Super Science Teacher Delivery Lecture Project”, in which the staff of our college visit elementary or junior high schools to provide special classes on science, technology or other subjects. This project was adopted as part of the Support Program for Contemporary Educational Needs by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. To provide education on design skills for students in the advanced mechanical engineering course and advanced electronic and information engineering course of the faculty of advanced engineering of our college, Problem Based Learning (PBL) has been conducted with the cooperation of the Super Science Teacher Delivery Lecture Project. In the PBL, students developed the teaching materials and experiments for science and technology lessons of elementary or junior high school students. In addition, the design skills of the students were evaluated by the reports on design skills, the demonstration of the delivery lecture and the records of the their efforts. From the results of the student questionnaire on this PBL, it is clear that most of the students understood “what are the design skills?” and acquired design skills.

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The concept of educational programs at departments of mechanical engineering in Kansai University is introduced in detail. Furthermore, the outline of the curriculum of the departments of mechanical engineering is explained. The distinctive features of the curriculum, for example; the educational course for freshmen in the mechanical engineering fields, are exemplified. Then, problems in the educational program and original attempts for solving the problems are also described. Under the discussion for reorganization of the faculty of engineering, finally, the plan concerning the innovation in the departments of mechanical engineering would be also introduced.

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The paper introduces the outline and results of the education program of “Training of designers for town renovation”, which has been done for two years in Osaka University, sponsored by the Ministry of education, culture, sports, science and technology. The program has three main aims as follows ; to understand three factors of town planning, “Shape”, “System” and “Mind” and master the design skills for realizing three factors, to master the design skills integrating three factors which are “Environment”, “Social” and “Economic”, and to perceive various people living, improve the ability of communicating and enhance the desire of participating town planning process.

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This paper gives an overview of an advanced educational program for software design engineering that is currently conducted at Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University under the grant “ Initiatives for Attractive Education in Graduate Schools” from MEXT. Software design engineering is highly expected to play a critical role in winning success in designing the next-generation software systems. The aim of the program is to bring up young researchers with the latest design methodologies and practical design experience, who can pioneer the frontier of software design engineering. The program is conducted with the collaboration of industries that have rich practical experience and are facing the engineering problems to be solved in developing the next-generation software.

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The program, “Education for 21st Century Engineering Scientists Leading New Interdisciplinary Research Fields”, was proposed from the Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, and was selected as one of the initiatives for “Attractive Education in Graduate Schools”, 2005. This program grounds on our educational concept declaring that “we contribute to the creation of the true culture of mankind through the devotion to the fundamental developments of technology on the basis of a fusion of science and engineering”. The present article outlines the initiative program, and describes our activities of the research and education for endowing the graduate students with specialty knowledge as well as interdisciplinary and international attainments.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University is now developing “Graduate Education Program of Design and Integration Capability” under the MEXT's scheme entitled “Initiatives for Attractive Education in Graduate Schools”. Maturation of society and life, globalization of manufacturing industry, latest demands of human's welfare have changed the meaning of design from functional ensureance to value creation. This requests graduate education of mechanical engineering to turn its definition over both synthesis and analysis and to learning and communication capabilities beyond knowledge itself. With recognizing such a background, the program aims to reform the education curriculum of mechanical engineering by introducing a product design subject which integrates design methodology education and project-based learning over industry- sponsored design problems, several graduate-level fundamental subjects, and the depth area system in which elective subjects are categorized into several areas based on their specialty. This paper describes the objectives, undertakings, promises, etc. of the program.

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Department of Adaptive Machine Systems, Department of Materials and Manufucturing Science and Department of Business engineering have constructed the educational programs of consecutive system from master to doctor courses in graduate school of engineering, “Pioneering Integrated Education and Research Program (PP) ”, to produce volitional and original mind researchers with high abilities of research, internationality, leader, practice, management and economics by cooperation between them for reinforcement of their ordinary curriculums. This program consists of the basic PP for master course students and the international exchange PP, leadership pp and tie-up PP of company and University for Doctor course students. In 2005^th the basic PP was given to the master course students and then their effectiveness of the PP was investigated by questionnaire. The results of questionnaire proved that the graduate school students improved their various abilities by the practical lesson in cooperation between companies and our Departments in the basic PP, and that the old boys after basic PP working in companies appreciated the advantages to business planning, original conception, finding solution, patents, discussion, report skills required in companies.

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As an extension of the subject “English for Engineers” offered by the Graduate School of Engineering to its students, a summer intensive technical English course is held every year in the United States. The contents of the summer program are customized to meet the needs of the engineering students of Osaka University, and from 2004 participants can get the credits corresponding to English for Engineers II, a subject that usually is taken in the second semester at Osaka University. The evolution in the contents of the summer program, first designed in 2003, as well as the achievements, further possible improvements and problems to be solved are analysed.

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Three international simultaneous lectures of the post graduate level in the field of environmental science and engineering are under preparation in Kyoto University. They are planned to be opened in three Asian universities (Tsinghua University in China, University of Malaya in Malaysia, and Kyoto University in Japan) as formal courses. The contents of the lectures, purpose of the project and technical problems are reported.

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Osaka University has been chosen for the FY2005's “Selected Efforts of the Distinctive University Education Support Program (Gendai GP/Good Practice) ”by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) . The aim of this project is to improve English proficiency of undergraduate students with scientific backgrounds. Under this strategic fund, e-Learning course contents were developed for instructing basic, yet practical English for Biotechnology during FY2005. Throughout the project, e-Learning contents will be developed for five other selected subjects of science i.e., 1) biotechnology, 2) information technology, 3) nano-technology, 4) environmental technology and 5) robotics technology, for undergraduate students as guiding courses to ESP education in graduate (higher) level.

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Japanese industry has been encouraged to transform from a mode of ‘recovery’ to one of 'front-runner' in effective innovation and creation of new businesses and markets based in accomplishments of basic research. Graduate School of Technology Management at Ritsumeikan University strives to not only offer knowledge and skills, but also business experiences to its students so that they may acquire the abilities to discover and solve practical problems logically, analytically and systematically. To achieve these aims, it has inaugurated the Ritsumeikan University Practicum Program by enhancing existing internship programs. Under the guidance of its faculties, this program will allow its students a chance to set and solve actual problems in real world business environments.

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Program of Research Internship as Vocational Education has been carried out in Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University last year. Agreement of the internship has been promoted by discussing plan, adjustment and practice for the graduate school students in the company. The company has proposed many research themes for students and explained the contents in the meeting. The students submitted the application forms including their desired theme, curriculum vitae, motivation, appeal and activity, and the company accepted the students as research students. The selected students experienced the internship research works in various research centers. The meeting for reporting the experiences was set, joined by the students, persons in charge of the internship in the company, university supervisors, dean, members of the internship committee and office workers. Resultantly, the students caught different and fresh impression for the internship research and were considered to be encouraged for the advanced study.

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The ministry of economics and industry started a project collaborated by industries and universities titled by “upbringing core engineers in a production site” in 2005. In this article, “casting” is treated as for the fundamental area of productions, explains a project “program on upbringing core engineer in foundry”

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Recently, engineering education has been called engineers education or design education, and new programs and projects at universities and technical colleges have been started in diversified social environment. At Osaka Prefecture University, which was reorganized in 2005, the Advanced Education Development Center and the Intellectual Bridge Center work on the enhancement of faculty development (FD) . In this paper, it is shown that FD seminar, symposium for educational reform, course evaluation, and meeting for intellectual property and patent specification are held, and achieve concrete results.

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At Faculty of Engineering of Kyoto University, the course evaluation survey was carried out to 120 lectures in the second semester of the 2004 fiscal year. In this paper, the structure of the course evaluation questionnaire was clarified, and the feature of the education of the faculty was described based on the results. Although the lectures seem generally to be well-organized and the students had attended the classes seriously, some problems also had been observed. For example, the wide variation of class means would suggest some lectures might not be so effective. Besides, the lack of active self-study of the students was shown. For improvement of engineering education in Kyoto University, it was suggested that a further follow-up survey from entrance to graduation should be carried out.

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Lecture evaluation questionnaires have been carried out to students because they are the suitable ways to improve the classes. Though the purpose of lecture evaluation questionnaires is to confirm whether it has fulfilled faculties' responsibility or not, we consider that our lectures should be evaluated from the three viewpoints, namely, by the students, the academic staffs and the society members. We proposed successfully the lecture evaluation questionnaire items desired by the society members that are alumni of our faculty.

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