In past engineer education of our country, it is thought that the education about the safe design has not been performed enough. In this report, at first, “basics of the safety” necessary for all departments and, “the basics of the safety design” that are more necessary for which engineering pro-department are introduced. Assuming these learning, the safety engineer education should includes safe design subjects specialized in each specialized fields. As an example of the subjects specialized in safe design, a curriculum of the field of the machinery safety and a safe engineer qualification system are suggested. Finally the direction of the engineer education to support social safety is suggested that with mastering basics and specialty safe design techniques it is necessary to learn “safenology” which is study of the comprehensive safety considering sense of values of a human being and the social.

View full abstract

Safety is one of the most important points in engineering ethics. Although safety, economic efficiency and convenience contradict each other, these three criteria must be balanced in any product or service. When we balance safety with economy or convenience, we must consider diversity of value for safety because safety means that risk is in acceptable range and the range depends on the person. To contribute safety of society and to cultivate consideration for users, lectures for engineering ethics should contain elements of safety engineering, such as risk assessment, intrinsic safety, hazards and dangerous state.

View full abstract

Designers must acquire methodologies to prevent accidents and failure of engineering devices, structures, and systems. By analyzing how errors were introduced in the design process and how they might be avoided, the study of failure raises awareness for how better quality and reliability might be achieved in engineering designs. The methodologies of the study of failure consist of analyzing the backgrounds and the causes of the accidents or failures, studying general concepts of the causes, and applying the general concepts to a newly created design. Students studying these methodologies will improve their ability to create safe and reliable design solutions.

View full abstract

We proposed and suggest the new viewpoint to implement the physical systems into the human societies. What human needs is not the physical system itself, but the service system which includes the physical system. Furthermore, “the social system” should be also designed to define what kind of services will be required for human society, and the specification for the physical systems.

View full abstract

Programming is discussed as a teaching material of design education for engineers. The advantage of using Japanese language in programming is shown in view of word order and the importance of mother tongue is pointed out.

View full abstract

We supposed that a worker of an enterprise has the danger response behavior types. We made an experiment, and I found out that the danger response behavior types exists actually 14 kinds. And we found the danger response behavior types different respectively. Since putting it in the group work, we also knew a worker transfer to dangerous behavior types from safe behavior types. So we made a group according to the behavior types and did safety training using appropriate curriculum and course. As a result, danger of a group decreased. So, We could confirm the effect of the safety training.

View full abstract

We have mostly focused on the operational work such as “Hiyarihatto (near miss) ” and “Kiken Yochi Training (Accident prediction training) ” as safety education in Japan. But the international mobilization of human resource occurred along with the global markets and fiercer competition and the machinery and equipment were developed, targeting the international markets. The thinking of the safety has been largely changed because of this change of the market environment. We absolutely require to observe the international safety standards especially in the manufacture industry. In this report we will focus on ISO13849-1 : 2006 among the international safety standards and propose the training programs combined with the lectures and practices. And also we will give some examples of safe education we implemented to workers.

View full abstract

We report an effective retrospective group discussions with Ask-Why in KWS retrospectives as a way to enhance problem solving skills. The KWS retrospectives has two frameworks: KPT and Ask-Why. We have applied the Ask-Why to group discussions in engineering design education. During the Ask-Why, students hold discussions with 4M analysis to work out the reasons for what went wrong in given scenarios. Once the root cause is identified, the students design multiple solution strategies and devise short-term and long-term measures to be implemented. As a result, we conclude that the group discussions using Ask-Why is able to demonstrate an educational effect in terms of the development of problem solving skills.

View full abstract

Auto mechanics working in maintenance shops have to carry out dangerous tasks during automotive maintenance work. This means that during automotive maintenance exercises, university students also have to carry out dangerous tasks. Therefore, it is necessary to equip them with safety skills and create an understanding of work safety. However, the low frequency of dangerous maintenance tasks tends to undermine the safety awareness during such work. Under this situation, extensive efforts are underway to produce experience-based learning materials in auto maintenance training and improve educational methods. The results show that an increase in awareness of dangers through the use of materials, which has made experiencing familiar cases or phenomena concerning dangerous articles possible, has led to an increase in safety awareness.

View full abstract

An interactive and realistic walkthrough system for safety education has been developed to enhance the engine room training of marine engineers, by using the Virtual Reality (VR) technology and photographic images of the school training ship “Yuge-maru” of the Yuge College. To reproduce the walkthrough experience vividly, altogether 2160 photographs have been taken at 72 viewpoints in the engine room. The educational potential of the system also has been investigated by demonstrations in actual classrooms. The demonstrations are given for 153 students in a maritime college, and their responses are surveyed by using questionnaires.

View full abstract

Recently, introductory education is becoming important for engineering students. Under such a condition, a basic laboratory class was developed for first-year students at Setsunan University. The class is opened to five departments in Faculty of Science and Engineering. This paper describes the attempt of the class and discusses the effect of the class. The major results obtained are as follows;1) The number of students with confidence in science increased by completion of the class, 2) The report system that requires preparation of the class is considered to be effective for developing the study habits, 3) Most students were able to recognize importance of the team activity by joint hands-on learning to work on various experimental themes by the team.

View full abstract

In electrolytic experiments introduced in general chemistry textbooks for high schools, colleges, and universities in Japan, only limited examples appear to observe electro-generated products, for example H₂ and O₂ evolution during the water electrolysis and metal deposition during electroreduction of corresponding metal ions. In order to make an impact upon the students, to attract the interest of them, and to enhance their understanding about electrolysis, the visualization of the metal ions electro-generated from the metal anodes was tried using their coloration reactions. Iron, copper, and lead rods were employed as the metal electrodes because of the easy availability and low prices. During the electro-oxidation, generated Fe²⁺, Cu²⁺, and Pb²⁺ could be visualized as Turnbull Blue, bluish white Cu (OH) ₂ and dark blue [Cu (NH₃) ₆²⁺], and the precipitation of white PbCl₂ when they reacted with [Fe (CN) ₆^3-], aqueous ammonia, and Cl^-, respectively. On the other hand, OH^- generated on the cathode could also be visualized by phenolphthalein. These coloration and precipitation reactions were observable radially from the metal rod electrodes and the reaction rates depended on the electrolytic current. The visualization was experimentally performed at an actual chemistry class and the utility value was estimated. As a result, all the students could observe the visualization and both the questionnaires and reports submitted by them included their affirmative impression about the understanding about the electrolysis.

View full abstract

Project-based learning (PBL) is effective for teaching students about the engineering design process, as it leads to higher educational effectiveness among lower-grade students. In this paper, we introduced an original PBL program that involved the use of an autonomous mobile robot in a rescue robot contest, and we assessed its educational effectiveness among several categories of students who participated in the contest. The results demonstrated that essential abilities for information engineering could be acquired by participating in the contest, and both the PBL program and contest provided a good educational environment for lower-grade students.

View full abstract

In Gifu National College of Technology, we have two classes, named as Fundamentals of Digital Systems and Applications of Digital Systems. These two classes have three features. First of all, they are conducted as e-learning. Because some students have little basic knowledge of digital systems, it is mandatory to attend some lectures. In addition, these classes have five different types of attendance. These types are students of Advanced Course, non-degree students, students from other colleges, adults of the Gifu Network University Consortium and students of Acquisition Program of Design Skills for Digital Systems, respectively. Furthermore, we rend practice boards. From some results of questionnaire survey, it was appeared that the practice boards were very useful for these classes.

View full abstract

Recently, almost new employees join the company without going through the experience of technical education related to manufacturing in the university and these conditions are worse every year. Author’ s Institutes applied the training which is combining its purpose of study and development of global human resources in the basic mechanical and electrical technology education with lecture and exercise in English for the new employees regardless of major in our associated company. And, not only their evaluation of this basic training but also their boss’ s evaluation are very good after assigning them for new work. And it could got a good result. This report is that the contents, result and examination for this training.

View full abstract

A low-price handy-size spectrometer was designed and fabricated. Wavelength scanning was achieved by switching LEDs with eight wavelengths. The obtained transmission spectra agreed well those obtained with a conventional spectrometer with the correlation coefficients up to 0.9985-0.9999. The LED spectrometer was applied to measure a time-varying chemical reaction such as neutralization titration. It was applied to a first-year natural science fundamental education. The evaluation from the students showed the usefulness of the present apparatus for the engineering basic education.

View full abstract

Nowadays, the ethical problems faced by engineers become hard to solve independently. Group work has been widely brought to education of engineering ethics for the purpose of uplift of behavior design ability in the face of ethic problem. However, it is difficult to evaluate the educational effect of group work collectively. For the betterment of educational effect, it is important to know how students think for each topic. Therefore, I conducted the questionnaires based on Semantic differential method about images of group work for four different topics on students. In this paper, I analyzed their images of group work with principal component analysis and clarified that their images of group work are changed due to the difference of topics.

View full abstract