CO-CREATIVE EDUCATION BEYOND CULTURES AT KANAZAWA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

Everyone recognizes the value of young students from all over the world understanding each other beyond cultures in order to solve the problems the world is facing. In addition, universities must exist as a central place to foster such global discussion and creation. However, Japanese universities are gradually losing their global position. In response to this situation, since 2014, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in Japan has been developing the “Super Global University Creation Support” project to promote the globalization of universities. In order to strongly advance the globalization of education at Kanazawa Institute of Technology (KIT), the president developed the framework “co-creative education beyond cultures” in September 2016. In this co-creative education, we have divided the problem of globalization as “Outbound” and “Inbound” and created various programs to address both. As a representative program of “Outbound,” KIT developed a new dual degree program with Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2017. In this program, students of both universities can earn degrees from both schools by spending one year at RIT and one year at KIT and exchanging the units earned at each school. As a representative “Inbound” program, KIT developed a joint internship education program for students of Vietnam Japan Institute of Technology (VJIT) and KIT. In this program, VJIT students prepare for the internship in Vietnam, as well as in Japan. After that, they participate in an internship with a Japanese company for several weeks. During this program, both during the education portion at KIT and during the internship, each VJIT student is paired with a student from KIT. KIT intends to strongly promote globalization by enhancing these programs, as well as developing new joint programs with international universities and companies in the future.