An international design course has been developed and taught during the past four academic years. Since the initial offering of the course in 2004, two engineering institutes (one in Japan, one in the US) developed the course with the objective of introducing an international component into the design curriculum. The collaboration between faculty and students from each institution takes place through email, websites, and live collaboration software. In the upcoming academic year, the course will be further improved by increasing the duration of the year in which collaboration takes place, and by including a third engineering institute (in Taiwan) in the collaborative effort. The paper summarizes the procedure that is proposed for carrying out the respective courses at each institution, as well as how the collaboration will be managed. The course objectives and proposed assessment plans from each institution will he discussed.

View full abstract

Engineering Design can be defined as a skill for problem solving in the context and it combines closely with creativity. We have pursued the Space Explorers Project between the US and Japan. The work is composed of some creative education components that relate to Space, Mars, Moons, etc. In this study, we postulated the virtual project for the emigration to the Moon from the Earth. In such a case, we needed an appropriate greenhouse in which various plants could grow. The problem for students to solve was what type of greenhouse should be the best on the Moon. The virtual design training included all cognitive levels of Bloom's taxonomy. As the mentoring teachers, we led students from Bloom's lowest level called knowledge to his highest level called evaluation. We compared the results between the US and Japanese students and discussed the differences from the viewpoint of engineering design skills.

View full abstract

This paper discusses research being conducted on the formation of human identity and how that research can be utilized to design courses that will develop students' abilities in intercultural interaction. The first section of the paper analyzes Jacques Lacan's notions on the formation of identity and presents the authors' further development of these theories in their concept of Identity Matrixing. This is followed by a section that examines Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's position that the current global economic system is in the 3^<rd> Paradigm of development, the stage which they term informatization. Here the socio-economic ideologies that are transmitted by Advanced Information and Communications Systems are discussed. In the next section, the authors' theory of the Meta-Symbolic Order is explained. In this section, the effects of the aforementioned ideologies on regional cultural systems and on regional identities are considered. Finally, the paper provides the details on two courses of study designed to address current and future concerns regarding intercultural communication.

View full abstract

In the advent of Internet technologies, engineering syllabus all over the school curricula have inevitably been revised and transformed into more globally compliant courses suitable for modern engineers in future. In addition to the LAN technology in school campus, which is prerequisite of TCP/IP as well as security technologies among networking information, web design script language provisions are also essential. Computer literacy for information transactions in everyday life is also indispensable among many engineering courses as well as computer language workshops provisioned in former curriculum. More sophisticated measures for internet security are to be adopted in future among engineering courses in accordance with human rights acts together with the knowledge and intellectual property guidelines. Computer literacy subjects are introduced into 1^<st> year curricula to substantiate awareness for internet crime and of it's preventions.

View full abstract

There has been rapid development in Southeast Asian countries in the past decades. Continuing engineering education and professional development play key roles in the advance of engineering know-how in the rapidly changing technological world especially in Southeast Asia. This paper intends to provide an overview of continuing professional development activities in a number of Southeast Asian countries. The introduction of compulsory professional development hours for the renewal of professional engineering registration in Singapore and some of its neighboring countries will facilitate further rapid development in continuing engineering education. Examples on successful cases and models will be illustrated. The improvements on some existing programs will also be highlighted.

View full abstract

The Japan Society of Education for History of Technology(JSEHT) attained its tenth year in October 2006. This society started its scientific activity in October 1995, and we had an inaugural meeting at Sophia University in Tokyo. In April 1996, we had an ordinary meeting at same university and a local meeting at Museu, Meiji-mura, Aichi Prefecture in November 1996. Newsletters have been published by quarterly of each year. But this society published first journal "The Journal of Education for History of Technology" in March 2000. After this year, journal have been published constantly once/twice of a year. The first inteanational conference on history of technology opened in October 1998 at Beijing with Chinese societies and universities. In This presentation, ten years history and scientific activities of this will be introduced.

View full abstract

With an extension of INTENG ("INT" ernational "ENG" ineering) network system, which has been developed and operated in order to exchange information collaboratively among our campus and sister Universities in many different countries and to be an electric worldwide mediator since the last year, a new online international community forum and alumni database has been constructed by utilizing only free open source software. This new online network is extremely important not only for a follow-up support of our graduates, but also for an attraction of new perspective international students. The cutting edge open source Content Management Systems (CMS) named "Joomla!" is used and it is designed to be flexible, simple, customizable, and powerful, even for non-programmers. Most importantly, non-technical (end) users such as students can freely add new extensions/functions any time in a modular/scalable way. Thus, community members can build its content and functionality by themselves by adding new modules/tools such as Blog, Chat, Forum, Ads, Wiki, Mailing List, Newsletter, Poll, multi-language translation, etc. In this report, we will present its basic features and the current status.

View full abstract

Inarguably, education is essential for the development of a nation in the 21st century. Given this fact, it would be expected that the people charged with educating the nation should have quantifiable skills and experience in order that a consistent, coherent and measurable educational experience is enjoyed by the all those participating. However, no specific evidence for this statement can be found in higher engineering education. The Professional Engineering Educator Accreditation System (PEEAS) initiated by JSEE in 2005 aims to provide a system to gather, and to show explicitly, such evidence and improve the quality and status of engineering educators. This paper presents the system's background, characteristics, application requirements, and renewal requirements, tied with the JSEE CPD System, etc. It aims for wider acceptance, as a de-facto standard qualification framework, for the improvement of educators' quality, social status and thus engineering education itself, while facilitating continuous feedback from educators, assessors and society. By now, a total of 562 educators have been awarded certificates, classified from 2nd-class to special Professional Engineering Educators. This scheme allows recognition of the achievement of those professionals.

View full abstract