 Under the proposal of Dr. Fun-Den Wang, chairman of CORE, Ms Anne Margulies, director of MIT OCW and Prof. Jianzhong Cha, UNESCO Chair in Beijing Jiao Tong University, CORE, BJTU, MIT OCW and OMAX jointly organized a workshop in Beijing Jiao Tong University on May 13th. Dr. Alex Slocum from MIT, the instructor of two MIT OCWs (2.007 Design and Manufacturing I, Spring 2005 and 2.75 Precision Machine Design, Fall 2001) exchanged his experience and methods in teaching engineering design with the Chinese professors specialized in the field. Close to 40 professors from Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, China University of Geosciences, Beihang University, XiĄŻan Jiao Tong University, Dalian University of Technology, Sichuan University, China Central Radio and TV University, Central South University, Donghua University, Hebei University of Science and Technology, Wuhan Technical College of Communications, Hebei University of Technology and Beijing Jiao Tong University attended this workshop.
 Prof. Zimao Zhang, the provost of BJTU, Prof. Yuefa Fang, Dean of the School of Graduate, Prof. Cha, UNESCO Chair and Dr. Fun-Den Wang respectively delivered speeches. On behalf of BJTU, Prof. Zhang expressed his warm welcome to all the guests and highly praised Dr. Wang and CORE for their great contributions to education in China. Prof. Fang briefly introduced the situation and experience of engineering design education in China. Prof. Yiping Lu from BJTU hosted the workshop.
 Dr. Wang said this workshop was one of the first attempts to optimize the oversea courseware introduced by CORE. The workshop not only brought oversea courseware into China, but also made the academic exchange between teachers at home and abroad a reality.
Apart from sharing his teaching experience in engineering design, Dr. Slocum also emphasized the importance of arousing studentsĄŻ passion in designing work. In exchange, Chinese professors shared their experience and methods. In the afternoon, through working on a small project in groups, all the professors experienced a model of group design advocated by Dr. Slocum.
The success of this workshop foreshadows more academic exchange programs of this sort in the future. The contents of the activity will be shared on COREĄŻs website later on.
At the end of this workshop, Dr. Slocum revealed that he would take a year off next school year and be willing to give presentations at similar workshops in China. CORE would help to arrange his academic activities. CORE also expressed that universities interested in this type of workshops can contact CORE Office in Beijing. |
