Abstract:

The presentation reports the extra-curricular cross-disciplinary approach and successful results of the “Smart City” project at Kanazawa Institute of Technology and International College of Technology collaborating with the local government and communities in Japan. The “Smart City” project aims at proposing safe and secure city planning through development of IoT (Internet of Things) devices. The project member consists of students of the department of mechanical engineering, the department of electrical engineering, the department of information and computer science, etc.

The curriculum and extracurricular projects are interwoven to develop students’ innovation skills. PBL (Project/Problem-Based Learning) in a curriculum is well designed to learn the process and the theory of problem solving with in-class group discussion and assignments. However, it is not enough to deepen experience and skills needed in a real-life multi-disciplinary problem solving. Extracurricular activities play an important part to enhance the cross-disciplinary activities using the design process to solve problems. Students can perform activities over two or more years through extracurricular projects.

The project members investigated the bicycle tourist route of the area in 2018. It turned out that the use rate of an incoming tourist's bicycle is low as a result of investigation. Then in 2019, they devised sightseeing information system convenient for foreign tourists to travel in the city by bicycles.

The project has the experience using GPS (Global Positioning System) to detect the dangerous place of the traffic accident. Taking advantage of the experience, they mounted the IoT device on a bicycle which is composed of GPS, voice module and LPWAN (Low-Power Wide-Area Network). If a bicycle comes to a tourist spot, the tourist can hear sightseeing information in English. They also designed the tourist route by bicycle involving 15 tourist spots in Kanazawa city.

To implement and test their solution, they planned and carried out the stamp rally in cooperation with “Machinori” which is the bike sharing service provided by Kanazawa City Government.

In this paper, we firstly introduce the education system which combines the curriculum and extracurricular projects. Next, we explain the smart city project and what the smart sharing is. After introducing the project outcomes, the pedagogical effects will be described. The extra-curricular project shows an effect in acquisition of a special capability and basic ability to work in society.

The project was supported from the University Consortium Ishikawa and the Ishikawa Prefectural Government..

Keywords:

PBL, GPS, extracurricular design project, IoT, smart city.