TUSUR and Ritsumeikan University joins CDIO Asia Meeting

The cooperation with Ritsumeikan University has always been one of the most dynamic ones, and this year in order to ensure better integration of our educational approaches the representatives of TUSUR and Ritsumeikan attended the annual CDIO Asia Meeting.

The cooperation with Ritsumeikan University has always been one of the most dynamic ones, and this year in order to ensure better integration of our educational approaches the representatives of TUSUR and Ritsumeikan attended the annual CDIO Asia Meeting.

The CDIO™ INITIATIVE is an innovative educational framework for producing the next generation of engineers. The framework provides students with an education stressing engineering fundamentals set in the context of Conceiving — Designing — Implementing — Operating (CDIO) real-world systems and products. The Initiative was developed with input from academics, industry, engineers, and students and was specifically designed as a template that can be adapted and adopted by any university engineering school. Several times a year the CDIO Meeting, held in different geographical regions, provides a platform for lively discussions on education reform among engineering educators and staff members from institutions of higher education, engineers from industry with invested interest in education.

Since yearly 2000 TUSUR actively implements the project-based group learning, the educational approach which is very close to CDIO concept. Trying to expend this practice into international dimension and to bring our educational approaches more in line, a new joint course in Global Software Engineering was initiated together with Ritsumeikan University in 2012. This course helps students simulate a working environment where different professionals work remotely in international teams. Students from TUSUR and Ritsumeikan representing different countries and speaking different languages learn to work together and this is the main goal of the project.

In the CDIO Asia Meeting TUSUR and Ritsumeikan had an opportunity to share and to discuss this unique experience with colleagues from other Asian countries, but also to invite new participants to this project, for instance, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, that hosted the Meeting.

This trip to Japan allowed as well to visit the Ritsumeikan Campus located in Kusatsu district, where the first Master student from TUSUR will start his studies in the framework of the Dual Master Degree Program between our universities signed last year. Preparing his venue, TUSUR representatives took this opportunity to "walk in his shoes": to see the university facilities, to eat at student canteen and to visit the dormitory.

Here below are some photos representing Ritsumeikan Campus in Kusatsu (Japan):