Examples of how to manage classes of Project Based Learning (PBL) in the field of mechanical engineering are proposed from the viewpoint of efficient combination between lecture-style lessons and practical training. The classes of PBL have already been introduced into the engineering educational program, and they are sometimes managed by Professors invited from industries. Though PBL classes are recognized to be effective for motivation of students, little common understanding has been established on the relation between expert knowledge obtained through lecture-style lessons and the topics presented in PBL classes. All professors are required to re-establish a sheared awareness of teaching expert knowledge for engineering students in practical use. For this purpose, several examples of ideal points treated in PBL classes are proposed in this article.

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PBL (Project Based Learning or Problem Based Learning) has attracted attention as a method to develop human resources capable of solving problems with teams. PBL is a learning method to solve problems with a project type team. PBL is an educational method that can effectively acquire problem solving power, creativity and ability to help each other in a team. In PBL, how to evaluate educational purpose quantitatively is an important point. This paper introduces examples of how I evaluate the educational purpose of PBL.

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MEXT has been implementing EDGE (Enhancing Development of Global Entrepreneur) program for three years since FY2014, as part of promotion of PBL (Project-Based Learning) education. In the EDGE program, selected 13 universities are funded to develop and carry out their ambitious educational programs, and the wide collaborative activities have been done for developing curricula and establishing innovation ecosystem for all universities in Japan. Nowadays Japan is needed to strengthen the creation of start-ups and foster human resources with global entrepreneurial mentality in order to strive to create new businesses.

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Currently diverse skills are needed in education in Japan, which are regarded as difficult to nurture in conventional educational methods. In response to this, two types of PBL (Problem-Based Learning and Project-Based Learning) are gaining attention. In this article author studied how PBL is practiced in education in Japan. Data are collected from article database CiNii and 2616 relevant articles were extracted. Author categorized the data into eight categories and found PBL practices were most popular in “Medicine” category in 1990s and “Engineering” in 2000s. The number of PBL practices increased generally, but “Medicine” category decreased after mid 2000s and “Engineering” after 2014. In terms of skills required in PBL practices, “Basic skills” are most required in general, while “Expertise” is most required in “Engineering” category.

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The authors evaluated learning outcomes of participants in a global Project Based Learning (PBL) course by self-assessment, peer-assessment, and a diagnostic test named Progress Report on Generic Skills (PROG). We analyzed those evaluations for individual teamwork competency under global environment with diversity. Teamwork competency includes skills for communication, problem-solving and leadership. As result of correlation analysis, participants with certain language skill or working experiences in international environment tended to exert their teamwork competency effectively compared to the others without those skill and experiences even both had same scores in PROG test. This suggests that more training in English communication and opportunities to join global teamwork are needed for engineering students.

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Design is a basic engineering skill and as educators we have a responsibility to produce graduates with the ability to design effectively. We have developed a course that combines lectures on the design process, design seminars for studying designing methods and developing creativity, and practical exercises requiring the students to design and produce devices to meet client’ s needs and actual constraints. This paper presents the examples of the problem based learning approaches used in the course.

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It is desirable to experience a whole development project in a university education for students aiming at system engineers to deepen their understanding of occupation. Hence, based on the experiences that participated in system development projects, authors designed a method of PBL for system development education assumed a software developer, and fed knowledge about system development back to education for students. Concretely, students experience a series of flow of system development (i.e. requirement analysis, external design, internal design, program design, programming, test, and presentation for inspection) via this PBL. In this article, the implementation contents of this PBL are presented and its introduction effects are mentioned based on total results of the questionnaires.

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Problem-based learning (PBL) on the subject of manufacturing processes of synthesis, purification and analysis for a single chemical substance was performed. Production of linallol was chosen as a subject of group work. Every group investigated, discussed and proposed the chemical processes of linallol such as the synthetic method, distillation conditions and analytical conditions for gas chromatography under the constrained conditions, economic and productive efficiency and safety. In this PBL, eight rubric assessment points for the abilities of collecting information, designing and proposing solutions, understanding problems, cooperating with group members, etc. were fixed. The effect of enhancing the out-of-class learning time without increasing the mental burden of working for the students was found by this PBL approach.

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The education project, Educational Network for Practical Information Technologies, called enPiT, consists of four different important field in information technologies of information security, cloud, embedding system, business application, covers 100 universities, and more than 1,300 students have joined in enPiT. The difficulties and challenging points in enPiT exist in rich diversities of students, who are originally educated in different universities with different curriculums. This is why it is important to develop a measure of effectiveness of our education systems. In enPiT, we evaluate effectiveness by two ways of each practical skills and PROG test. In this paper, we report how to evaluate the effectiveness of practical education developed in the education project enPiT.

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A global and innovative human resource development is essential in recent Japanese industry because of rapid globalization of today’ s world. To address the needs in the industries, we performed the development program of innovative and global human resources in collaboration with 11 “Kosen” during Dec. 26-28, 2015. A total of 35 students and 8 professors in “Kosen” and Nagaoka University of Technology participated in this program. Through the hackathon-based facilitation and project management exercises, we grouped 6 teams, and evaluated students’ generic skills improvements. By using spearman’ s correlation test and network analysis, we could visualize the students’ development and interaction in each team. Besides, we propose that diversities of their educational institutions/majors and numbers of female students are the critical factors for effective team building based on principal component analysis of students’ diversities.

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This paper describe PBL at Robert T. Huang Entrepreneurship Center (QREC), Kyushu University. QREC is the center point of entrepreneurship education at Kyushu University and offers around 30 entrepreneurship programs to all Kyushu University students, both undergraduates and graduates. Workshop by small groups, such as PBL is common educational way at QREC. QREC introduce “Design Thinking” , one of PBL educations to their many programs as an important concept. Observation of individual’ s activities, interview to users and prototyping are typical functions of “Design Thinking” . Those functions are useful to promote not only good effects of PBL, but also entrepreneurship, creative mindset and innovation creation skillset for students.

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