Faculty Development Training by KTH faculty

KTH Faculty, Fredrik Lundell, Anna-Karin Hogfedlt, Johan Fridell, Yoko Takau-Drobin, visited us to deliver FD training. The main focus on the training was how to make engineering lectures more interactive and learner-centered. The training was largely funded through the Re-Inventing Japan Project fund. This training is a continuance of the visit to KTH last year, where several engineering colleagues were trained by the KTH FD team in Stockholm. The training sessions explored using technology in the classroom, using ‘the Flipped Classroom’ technique, and the KTH/MIT approach to engineering education CDIO.

We ran two 2.5 hour sessions on the 4^th March. The first was held in the department of Nuclear Engineering, and was attended by 14 faculty, ranging from the present and future head of the department to PhD students with an interest in teaching. The session was very well received.

Selected feedback from Nuclear Engineering:

It is extremely interesting and useful…Inspiring and fruitful…Excellent…Got lots of ideas…It was a good chance to think about education system for the first time

In the afternoon of the 4^th, we had an ‘open’ session, which was attended by mainly younger faculty from a range of engineering departments (including several participants from Mechanical and BioEngineering, plus others from Civil, Urban and others). We also had attendees from the ALESS program at Komaba, from GRASPP, and from the Education Planning Office at Hongo. In total there were 17 participants, and again the feedback was very positive.

Feedback from ‘Open’ session

Very useful and enlightening…Very inspiring…Fredrik used a concrete method…

Curriculum development can’t be done by single professors – come as a team

Conclusions

The KTH team are very keen to work with us more in the future on FD, and the very positive feedback from the participants strongly suggests there is both a need and a desire for such training. It is suggested that ways of making such training more sustainable be explored.  A long-term goal of creating an FD Center in Engineering could be discussed.

Report by Michael Handford