This paper provides an overview of the R & D Supporting Program by KAIARI (Korea Association of Industry, Academy, and Research Institute) for Korean Small and Medium Size Companies through University-Industry Cooperation. The background of establishing the KAIARI 18 years ago is introduced along with the specific programs and more detailed achievements of the R & D supporting programs. The Korean small and medium size companies, which consist of 99.9% among the number of companies in Korea, generally lack of the high level of engineers and the expensive test and measurement equipments. The effective cooperative system developing the R & D products and systems between university and industry becomes the hot issue and an essential element to maximize the international competitiveness in each nation. It is now generally understood as the best way to compensate the weakness of the industry and/or the academy by the strength of the academy or/and the industry. The current R & D supporting programs of KAIARI are (1) Cooperative Research & Development Project, (2) Project of Setting Up New Research Institute of Company, and (3) Project of Utilizing Expensive R & D Equipments at University. The contents and the outputs of those three projects are introduced and the R & D supporting programs of KAIARI have been also evaluated as one of the successful programs among various governmental R & D programs.

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We opened a new seminar style course where students take the lead in creating e-learning course materials. Students discuss about suitable topics and presentation styles, and eventually also create courseware under the supervision of several teachers. With this high level of student involvement, we are sure that our courseware will meet both the needs and the interests of students. In the first semester, we wanted to inventory the main needs, as well as the readily available information regarding international students getting settled in their (academic) lives at the University of Tokyo. The class of 12 international students identified over 300 keywords, grouped around main topics ranging from "Japanese Language" to "Transportation". Through this course, students learn various skills such as brainstorming, mind mapping, group work, international communication, collecting reliable information, and giving presentations. Creating courseware for their fellow students also helps the participants themselves to integrate in Japanese society.

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A Problem Based Learning Class for Materials Science and Engineering was planned in Metaverse (Second Life). Second Life is a virtual three dimensional space where avatars do everything on behalf of the real participants to classes. The Authors have applied the virtual space to PBL and discussion in various ways so far. Now we established the class environments, the system for virtual discussion among students with different languages through a translational system called Language Grid System. However, the most meaningful application should be the one where the three dimensional characteristics would be available for the classes. In this paper, we applied Second Life to three dimensional topic in Materials Science and Engineering discipline. Students from Germany, Malaysia and Japanese who were studying in Japan participated to the PBL project, learned and discussed about the crystallography and electron configuration for some elements.

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Egypt Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST) is a newly established university in Egypt through cooperation with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). In this university, Project Based Learning (PBL) approach has been introduced in the master program as one of the Japanese educational approaches. The authors evaluated the class by analyzing the result of questionnaire conducted to 9 students and found the difficulties such as objectives gaps, different student's background, and PBL approach adaptation in comparison to the regular courses. Based on this result, the authors suggest the utilization of groupware and the implementation of real situation PBL approach in the context of E-JUST.

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FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) is a widely known logic device which implements its internal circuit by programming. It has been mainly used in computer and LSI engineers as a prototype of LSI development. Currently, researchers who are in other fields keep their eyes on FPGA design and challenge to implement their sophisticated methods and applications into hardware. However, researchers who do have LSI design experiences must overcome barriers such as learning hardware knowledge and setup of FPGA design environments. Our developed platform named as "NEXUS" (Next-generation EXtra University-education System) provides FPGA research and education environment by e-Learning system and remote controlled FPGA, which guarantees a smooth collaboration between interdisciplinary researchers on FPGAs. We present the NEXUS platform and report the interdisciplinary project of "high-speed information search on FPGAs" as instances by utilization of this platform. In the project, we have studied the FPGA implementations in wireless communication and regular expression matching.

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The quality of an undergraduate engineering degree program is nowadays demonstrated by whether or not the students have achieved a set of outcomes (e.g., educational outcomes (a)-(k) prescribed by ABET). Particularly, the following three are critical outcomes: an ability to apply knowledge of basic sciences, mathematics and engineering (a), to identify, formulate, and solve problems (e), and to solve open-ended design problems using realistic constraints (c). To help students achieve such critical outcomes, it is important to introduce courses dedicated to materials selection. This article describes how and why materials selection is helpful in achieving such outcomes. The role of material selection tools (e.g., CES Selector from Granta Design) is also described. This study can be used for the continuous improvement of engineering curricula.

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Civil engineering is a field of study losing the popularity for university study in Japan and world. The reason in Japan is the social problem relating to negative aspects of civil engineering, such as bid-rigging as well as the reduction in its market size due to the downsized public works. However, the technological level of civil engineering in Japan is internationally high thanks to the natural environments. In order to overcome this situation, Hokkaido University attempts to start an international program of civil engineering for undergraduate level. This program is meant for both Japanese and international students. The main feature is as follows: (1) Courses offered in English, (2) Graduation thesis study in English, (3) International mobility of students through internship and joint-curriculum, and (4) Opportunity to obtain international engineering license. The success of this planned program would depend on international cooperation to develop and maintain the program. The following items need international cooperation: (1) Provision of international internship and joint-curriculum and (2) Recruitment of international qualified students. This paper introduces our challenge to start the international program.

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Hokkaido University started out in 1876 as Sapporo Agricultural College with foreign professors teaching agriculture and civil engineering to Japanese students in English. Since then HU has expanded to cover various disciplines and changed its medium of instruction to Japanese. In 2000, HU School of Engineering launched a graduate program with English as a medium of instruction. It is a complete reverse from a century ago because this time professors are Japanese while students are mainly international students from overseas. The main objective is to disseminate advanced knowledge Japan has accumulated through international students and at the same time "internationalize" our educational system. The "English Engineering Education program" or e^3 started in October 2000 with a limited number of fields. As of 2010 it has expanded to cover all fields offered by the School of Engineering. At present close to 100 graduate students from 27 countries enrolled in the program. 114 courses are offered in English, out of which 47 are regular courses, in other words, attended by both Japanese and e^3 students. This paper introduces the e^3 program and its practices. Its role on international cooperation in engineering education and on engineering education itself is described.

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This paper describes the major goals, implementation and results of the industry-university collaborations between National Instruments (NI) and leading Japanese universities. In NI, we initiated several grant programs to upgrade the educational facilities with state-of-the art instrumentation technologies in order to have more up-to-date and competitive engineering education. On the other side, several collaborative research projects initiated by providing technology support to the end users to accelerate the speed of research. As a result, we demonstrate a successful model for the industry-university collaboration both for education and research.

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In the early 1990s, in response to increasingly diversified demands in higher education, Finland created a dual higher education system, setting up Universities of Applied Sciences (formerly known as Polytechnics) alongside with traditional Universities. The Finnish universities of applied sciences have developed rapidly, successfully meeting the needs of practically-oriented higher education. In Japan, as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has pointed out, the technical college system has also developed successfully after it was established in the early 1960s to promote practical engineering education. This paper discusses the Finnish dual higher education system vis-à-vis the Japanese technical college system, on the basis of an intensive two-month field study in Finland. The authors suggest that the Finnish education system should be further explored as the Finnish experience could provide greater diversity to Japanese higher education.

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Japan's higher education system has been undergoing a transformation since the 1990s. Pressure from the government, society, industrial globalization, and other factors are causing universities to re-evaluate how they educate their students. Globally, many of these factors are also at play, and institutions worldwide have been considering the same reforms. Some engineering universities have banded together to create an educational framework, Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate, or CDIO, as a response to the global call for better engineering graduates. In 2010 the first Japanese organization, Kanazawa Technical College, joined CDIO as a Collaborator, recognizing the need for change and the ability of CDIO to meet that need. Comparing the ideals of a CDIO-based program with JABEE requirements, it is found that they are highly similar, and that following CDIO meets many of the desires of Japanese industry today. CDIO would be beneficial for all Japanese institutions of higher learning.

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The Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT) is in the process of implementing a university-wide survey to be taken by all students four times across their first two years of undergraduate study in order to help KIT educators assess and track the growth of students' personal, interpersonal, and technical skills. The survey is undergoing administration in project based learning (PjBL) design classes intended to impart a broad range of personal, interpersonal, and technical skills to students; this survey will allow for an enhanced understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the existing program and inform curricular design decisions in the future. The motivations for, some details of, and initial results from this new survey will be discussed, with some emphasis on the international nature of the team preparing the instrument and the difficulties in preparing assessment instruments across language and cultural barriers.

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Current status and trend in engineering ethics education in Korea has been presented through engineering ethics survey. It is only a beginning in engineering ethics education, however, due to ABEEK accreditation engineering ethics education will be emphasized greatly and further various action will be developed to improve current education system..

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In 2006 Muroran Institute of Technology established Manufacturing and Engineering Design Center (known as cremo) and has been running for five years. The center has three groups that have been actively concentrating on monozukuri: the education support group, the fundamental manufacturing research group, and the regional cooperation group. The center assists students in becoming highly skilled and innovative engineers. The center supports fundamental researches on monozukuri. In addition, the center strengthens regional cooperation and collaboration. In this report, the activities and achievements of the center are summarized briefly.

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