Abstract:

Although the percentage of young people attending college according to OECD data is not particularly high in Japan when compared with other countries, the completion rate of Japanese students actually enrolling in higher education is very high. This implies that the motivation to complete college successfully is relatively high in Japan where a college qualification is seen as mandatory—a kind of guaranteed pass for entering a career for those Japanese students who have chance to enroll in higher education. In contrast, in the US, for example, many young people initially enroll in college, but subsequently, if the conditions or circumstances are not favorable, leave college without graduating. Therefore, we can assume that they try to look for a career making wider choices within the higher education system after completing their high school education. If they decide it is not the right choice to stay at college, they will leave and choose another way forward. In Japan, the situation is not the same.

University, of course, offers specialized academic knowledge and is a place where students can acquire a specialized education. However, thanks to the latest information technology, university is no longer the only place where people can acquire specialized knowledge and information. A great variety of knowledge can be accessed instantly through the Internet and the process has become much faster and easier compared with a few decades ago.

However, there is one serious negative effect which comes from studying using the new technologies rather than attending college. Students studying alone often fail to develop communicative skills and this can have a damaging effect on any research field where cooperative activity and the sharing of ideas in constructive discussion is an important part of making significant advances.

In this cross-faculty seminar for freshmen, the curriculum will be designed to help students to develop communicative skills and share ideas to strengthen the ability to solve problems by working in a group environment. Brainstorming, joint problem-solving, evaluation and critiquing of ideas, group presentations and a variety of other strategies will be employed to develop those skills which are becoming more and more important in the Internet age.

I would like to introduce the way we conduct this project class covering the variety of  different approaches used and our attempts to nurture intensive self-development among the students. We will try to demonstrate the effect the curriculum has upon the students and show how they develop their confidence and communicative skills during this 16-week course.
Also In the later part of the course. we have developed a project class in which we try to mimic techniques used in business seminars. Students are encouraged to produce a proposal for improving their university and making it more attractive to applicants. Many interesting and imaginative proposals are submitted, and the fact that the seminar is inter-disciplinary means than students from different academic backgrounds learn about the interests and priorities of students and faculties other than their own, come to respect other disciplines, and compromise over the allocation of resources.

Each group gives its presentation competitively in front of the other students. I also provide an analysis of their self-evaluation as to how much they discovered about the changes in their way of thinking as a result of the course.

Keywords:

General Education, basic career design, study skill, curriculum design, trans-faculty.