EXECUTIVE PROGRAMS
Trans-Disciplinary Education on Society-Humanity-Science
- Source: 人文社會科學
- Date: 2012/04/09
Backgrounds
Despite that decades of prosperity has contributed enormously to education in Taiwan, while students top the world in terms of academic knowledge, they’re considered not as good at logical expression and critical thinking. Also, they often lack enthusiasm in participating public affairs and resolution in problem solving. In other words, citizen quality in Taiwan has not yet been improved by better education.
On the other hand, though broadening literacy of variable disciplines, especially those of science and humanities, has been emphasized a lot by politicians and social leaders, trans-disciplinary education has never really been put into reality due to all kinds of restrictions in schools. However, exactly because the ability to do trans-disciplinary thinking is critical in solving problems and making differences, we may well say that the future of Taiwan lies in trans-disciplinary education.
Motive
Different from “multi-disciplinary” and “inter-disciplinary” studies, trans-disciplinary one focuses on problem solving ability based on different expertise and specialties in different fields that include political, business, management, and scientific studies etc.. This is exactly what is missing in present education in Taiwan. With training of trans-disciplinary thinking as well as action and problem based internship, it’s expected that trained students would be able to solve problem and do thinking with trans-disciplinary perspectives, while the training program serve as an educational platform for both teachers and students to engage in local and global critical issues.
Purpose
The main purpose of this project is to do training of trans-disciplinary integration of science and humanities. The whole training program would be implemented in four year term, while the target trainees are undergraduate students as well as freshmen graduate students. Training vehicles include listening, speaking, reading, writing, and interactive communication.
The following are implementation strategies of this program:
1.Curricular Platform
Examples of high-quality curricular, courses, or programs from different colleges are published and shared on this platform, which serves as a virtual field for competition and interaction. The intention is to allow students from different colleges to learn from one another.
2.Forum
Members of this forum would hold 40-50 discourse per year, while the academic society would serve as references for curricular designs.
3.Summer Academy
During each summer vacation there would be one week term summer academies, in which internationally known scholars would be invited to inspire and train students with the help of designed activities like competition or interactive academic training.
4.Digital Interactive Website
All curricular, courses, forum, activities would be recorded, published and categorized in this platform so that all who are interested would be able to access related videos, text or voice recordings.
Expectations
1.Education: societies and environments for trans-disciplinary studies as a result of this project
2.Purpose: leadership with excellent listening, speaking, reading, writing abilities and interactive communication
3.Training: people trained with problem and action based programs could make a difference, face and solve real problems.
4.Training of teachers: scholars and teachers grow more concerned and more willing to participate in activities than before due to the professional forum established by the project.
5.Teaching resources: Online resources serve as demonstration of trans-disciplinary education and training, while examples serve as references for curricular improvements.
6.Lasting development: supports from business resources and cooperation could turn summer academy into an everlasting developing program that provide both basic and life-long education.
