Abstract:

Recently in Japan, semiconductor technology is becoming a hot issue. The Japanese government and the industrial sectors are trying to let many students learn fundamental and advanced knowledges in the field of semiconductor technology. Although certain numbers of students in secondary and higher education levels are actually getting interested in such fields, further trials are being required to allow more students to be attracted. For example, besides from traditional classroom lectures, some different style of experiences will be effective for allowing them to get familiar with the semiconductor technology.

The extra-curriculum project team organized by undergraduate students has performed various outreach activities in local community since the year of 2004. The present author was involved in organizing the project team, and has been served as their supervisor since then. The project team has been operated in extra-curriculum basis, in other words, not included in official education curriculum of the university. The student members do not obtain any credits through participation into the activities, and no influences are provided on their GPA scores based on their performances in the activities. Normally the topics of the science classes or science experimental demonstrations to be performed by the project team are likely to be related in the fields of basic physics and chemistry, some classes are being planned and performed recently on semiconductor practical technology, targeting elementary and secondary school students as well as senior generation. The aims of such semiconductor practice classes are:
(i) to attract interests from wide generations in the semiconductor fields, and
(ii) to enhance knowledge and understanding of the undergraduate members of the project team through experiences of explaining the related topics.

Since the year of 2023, the project team has conducted several semiconductor practice classes on various occasions.

One example is classes for high-school students. As one of the official programs of the Open-Campus events targeting high-school students, the semiconductor practice class is being conducted several times per year. About 15 to 20 high-school students attended each of the one-hour-long classes.

Another example is a class for elementary school children. The class was planned and conducted on March of the year of 2025. The 1.5-hour-long class was conducted both in the morning and in the evening with the same contents. About 10 elementary school children attended the class with their parent. The similar classes are to be performed in early January of 2026.

Any precise statistical analysis has not been performed for both the participants and the student members of the project team. In the questionnaire, favorable responses were obtained from the participants in several generations. Those classes are effective for stimulating and attracting participants’ interests on various generations in semiconductor fields.

The most important favorable achievements are related to the fact that performing such classes is useful and valuable for the undergraduate student members, since they can get effective chances to obtain and/or brush up their knowledges on semiconductor fields by themselves through preparations and actual performances of the classes. Explaining the related technologies with using easily understandable phrases and terms to the participants seems to be very valuable.

Keywords:

Outreach, extra-curriculum, undergraduate students, semiconductor technology.