Pre College Education Of Engineering At Kanazawa Institute Of Technology To Senior High School Students In Japan

In order to stimulate young students’ interest in science and engineering, Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT) and Wakasa Senior High School (WSHS) started a collaboration project in 2000. KIT gives a two-day pre-college engineering course to students from WSHS. As students have little engineering knowledge, we intend to achieve the objective of the course by three pedagogical concepts: the Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle, hands-on exercises, and cooperative learning. This paper discusses the experience of the pre-college engineering course, which the students attended at KIT in March 2001, and results of student feedback. Introduction There is a growing tendency in Japan for students to lose interest in science and engineering. Therefore, the importance of stimulating young students’ interest in science and engineering has been strongly emphasized. 2 In order to stimulate young students’ interest in science and engineering, a collaboration project started in 2000 between KIT and WSHS. KIT has been giving a two-day pre-college introductory engineering course to forty students from WSHS since March 2001. The curricula for this two-day course has been carefully designed to include the Design Section of the Technology Content Standard as published in the Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology. The course provides an opportunity for students to develop an understanding of the attributes of design and engineering. In addition, students are also exposed to the roles of troubleshooting, research and development, invention, innovation, and experiment in problem solving. On the first day of the pre-college engineering course at KIT, each student was asked to design and build one model bridge individually using light and flexible timber material, which is known as balsa wood. After completion, students applied loads onto the bridges until they collapsed. KIT faculty explained the basic strength of structures. At the end of the first day activity, students were assigned to teams and involved in group-discussion. Based upon the previous experience, which they acquired on the first day individually, each team strived to design and build a stronger model bridge so that it could withstand a much heavier load. Due to learning through hands-on exercises and group activities, the average load-carrying capacity of bridges designed by teams was 1.75 times larger than that for bridges designed by individual students. P ge 833.1 Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2003, American Society for Engineering Education Besides gaining technical knowledge, this project also helped students in initiating their decision on their majors before entering universities: e.g. engineering oriented majors or liberal arts. Students in Japan must choose their majors at the time of the entrance examination. They are not allowed to transfer afterwards. Those who want to transfer have to take an entrance examination again.