THE CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT TO ACCOMMODATE DIVERSE STUDENT IMAGES BY INCORPORATING CDIO IDEAS

Department of information media of Hokkaido Information University (hereafter HIU) has made four major curriculum revisions and three minor updates since it started in 2001. The concepts of the curriculum revisions are as follows; 1) enhancement of the first-year educational program focusing on active learning abilities including critical thinking and interpersonal skills, 2) executing practical project based learning (hereafter PBL) courses based on requests from industry, 3) conducting efficient disciplinary courses through blended learning using iPad and/or PC and cooperation among courses. This paper reviews the history of the department and the curriculum revisions which the department has been working on over the past 15 years. The curriculums were planned based on the characteristics of the enrolled students of this department and the type of human resources to be trained. Therefore, the working group (hereafter WG) composed of professors from each field examined the overall picture of the integrated curriculum in the first stage. The department actively worked on PBL with the same awareness of the context of CDIO standard 1. Concerning learning outcomes (standard 2) including personal skills and interpersonal skills, the department has also considered the opinions of industry advisors and graduates. The authors also considered an integrated curriculum (standard 3) that aims to improve personal skills, interpersonal skills, motivation for studying, etc. through cooperation among disciplinary courses. Moreover, the department considered a course placement in which disciplinary courses and the liberal arts courses interacted. In the curriculum, various required courses provided individual and group tasks to learn personal skills and interpersonal skills (standard 4). In addition to PBL, there are many courses using various methods of active learning, e.g. utilization of ICT. Considering the above mentioned, it can be said that the curriculum development and operation, and the administration of courses in this department are very close to the idea and efforts of CDIO.