Shih Chien University Higher Education SPROUT Project Goal Achievement Summary and Highlights
Implement teaching innovation and improve teaching quality: The College of Design, Shih Chien University, has held a number of international design workshops to select outstanding students for internships overseas (such as at Jason Wu Studio). In two years, the school joined 14 international exhibitions with 92 exhibition works and continued the “Cambodia humanitarian architecture” services, thereby implementing design social practices. The College of Management, Shih Chien University, has commenced course programming since 2018. So far, 50% of the students have taken up cross-domain courses; the FinTech Laboratory, AI Laboratory, and the Human-Computer Interactive Visualization Laboratory have been set up, while the AI Insurance Robot has received the recognition of many international awards. All the first-year students of the school have taken programming courses allotted for the first year, and the ratio of course enrolls has grown by 12%. In addition, the AWS Academy has been introduced to promote cloud computing specialization and popularization, while design thinking-based teaching models coupled with practice-oriented courses have been included. The College of Human Ecology, Shih Chien University, offers the Cross-domain Micro-credit Program. The topic-based teaching has been incorporated into cross-domain disciplines and issues while promoting community-based teaching; the College of Culture and Creativity, Shih Chien University, stimulates cross-cultural thinking and creativity through field trips; the College of Business Information, Shih Chien University, focuses on the application and development of the tourism industry, with information technology as the basis. The IDEA teaching model and issue orientation are employed to train students’ language and narrative skills, which have derived at significant practical application results. The entire teacher community in the school continues to achieve growth, and the student learning community “we.use.recylab” has received financial aid on new innovation from the Executive Yuan and the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Develop school characteristics: In deepening the characteristics, the school’s incoming and outgoing exchange students in 2018 reached 2,076 persons. With 211 sister schools, the school signed dual degree programs with 19 schools, providing more than 300 international exchange opportunities and commencing co-creation courses for students from both sides to take up. Asia Summer University’s all-English summer courses allowed each year also provide diverse cross-domain courses. In the same academic year, the international building was inaugurated. The “Muslim-friendly space” was created in respect of the diverse cultural environment. Shih Chien’s fashion design brand PRAXES was combined with design practice and marketing related practical courses. From design, manufacture, to marketing aspects, practical exercises were conducted. From 2018 to 2019, the brand sales locations nationwide increased from one to six (four in Taipei, one in Taichung, and one in Hsinchu). Transcending from the single business model working with magazines, cooperation with multi-media categories, such as TV dramas, fashion and cosmetic programs, online micro-films, musicians and singer concerts, etc. were added. The school has deepened industrial and academic links, has set up guidelines and incentive measures, and the total funding of industrial and academic plans has more than doubled. Additionally, the consultation service platform for customized intellectual property rights has been completed. At the same time, the “industry classroom” has incorporated industrial practices into the courses, and two “virtual industrial workshops” and one “multi-function performance art classroom” have been set up as practice fields to commercialize course R&D results.
Fulfill social responsibilities: The school has set up relevant guidelines, established the “Social Responsibility Promotion Committee” and the “Social Innovation and Practice Office”, and comprehensive support mechanisms to encourage teachers and students to participate in long-term and routine social practice. The school conducts field surveys of the market, with New Taipei City Ruifang Community, Tucheng Pinghe Community, and Dadingpu Community as targets. Combining group meal courses and incorporating the concept of design, specialty lunch boxes in the mining area have been developed. Through the continuous guidance by the empowerment team, community organization joint training courses are conducted to expand Pinghe Community residents’ active involvement in community affairs and achieve autonomous community operations. The Dadingpu Community uses local ingredients to develop foods with local characteristics through the integration of meal production and marketing practice related courses, thereby establishing economic autonomy. In addition, the 4D method was adopted to match teachers and students and local community manpower, integrate local living industries, and construct a value co-creation platform, which are extended to Mizuhu Tribe in Taoyuan District to establish www.uscxusr.com, a sustainable platform of green agricultural speciality products, assist farmers from Neimen District, Kaohsung in promoting technological marketing and service innovation and implement the reconstruction of rural villages featuring humanistic practice and cultural creativity.
Enhance higher education publicity: With the 2018 “reassured, stable, and secure employment” and the 2019 “scientific, productive, ethical, and artistic” framework, show concern to the economically and psychologically disadvantaged and physically disabled students. Conjunctively, learning guidance mechanisms, telephone interviews, and financial aid fundraising measures have been adopted to stabilize the schooling and employment of disadvantaged students. In addition, a digital consultation system has been set up to further strengthen guidance performance. The academic affairs governance “2019 school affairs performance report” endeavors for open and transparent school affairs information.
Project Summary
Since 2013, the school has won teaching excellence program awards for five consecutive years, with the total funding exceeding NT$200 million. In 2017, the school was the first private university in the nation to receive financial aid in the amount NT$27 million for the Teaching Innovation Pilot Program. Beginning 2018, the school received Higher Education SPROUT Project awards. Committed to enhancing the school’s “teaching” and “learning” quality and highlight the school’s characteristic development, the school continues to move towards the goal of becoming a “high-quality practical teaching university in the Asia-pacific region”. The school has since 2014 been rated by Ranker, an internationally renowned ranking website in the United States, as “The Top 30 Best Designed Colleges in the World”, making the school the only university in Taiwan to be honorably included in the list. In 2017, the school was selected by “Cheers Magazine” as the “Top 15 private schools favored by enterprises”, the “Top 17 in overseas exchange student momentum”, and the “Top 20 universities by school management performance”, ranked first in the “total ranking of receiving awards from international design contests over the years in Taiwan” released by “Higher Education Innovation Monthly”, ranked seventh in internationalization level in 2018 in the “Taiwan’s best university ranking survey” by “Global Views Monthly”, ranked by QS Top Universities Ranking 2019 in the global ranking range of 101-150 in the field of Art& Design, improved from the 18th place to the 10th place in the literature, law, and business university category in the “Taiwan’s Best Universities Ranking” by “Global Views Monthly”, improved from the 24th place to the 15th place in the private universities category (ranking 7th and 5th in Taiwan in international co-authored papers ratio (32.9%) and international teachers ratio (5.91%)), received “The Best Improvement Award”, and ranked 5th in private universities ranking in the “survey of master’s degree students favored by enterprises” by “Cheers Magazine”. In terms of practical education, the world’s first AI Insurance Robot researched and developed by the College of Management team received the assembly gold medal award and the innovation special award at the 2019 Malaysia Technology Expo (MTE). In 2019, Instructor Kung Chih-Ming of the Department of Information and Technology Communication was awarded the gold medal at Taiwan Innotech Expo for the 2019“plant protection machine regional beacon structure”. Instructor Lin Yu-Wen of the Department of Food Science, Nutrition, and Nutraceutical Biotechnology was awarded the silver medal for he “filter cup improvement structure”. All of them are indications of the school’s excellent school management effectiveness.
In the second phase of the project, more emphasis is given to the practice and problem solving-oriented spirit to comprehensively implement cross-domain learning and professional collaboration. With “creative living design brands and smart service cross-domain talent cultivation” as the theme, the contents and specific practices are detailed as follows:
Implement teaching innovation:
With the long-term accumulation of cross-departmental and international collaboration, the Department of Design has gradually strengthened digital design/digital manufacturing/virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality to engage in cross-domain support related professional design applications. This has in turn led to design course reform and links with international digital trends, thereby strengthening students’ familiarity with digital tool operations and professionalism in market competition. College of Culture and Creativity, Shih Chien University, in response to industrial trends, gives equal emphasis to theory and practice, with a focus on humanities and arts, creative thinking, and independent analysis ability to cultivate an international outlook, professional ethics, and social responsibility. The College of Management will create an all-rounded learning environment through “cross-domain programs, bilingual teaching, and overseas internships”, as well as “discussion-based smart classrooms.” This will in turn lead to the gradual implementation of fostering students’ competency involving “professionalism, saying, and doing”. The College of Human Ecology, Shih Chien University, will strengthen professional training courses and practice for students in the department to obtain professional licenses. At the same time, theme-based teaching courses in cross-domain disciplines will be planned, and experiential practical teaching with community as the axis and internationalization as the field will be promoted, thereby establishing links between learning and practice; The College of Business Information, Shih Chien University has set an industry-university interactive teaching base with characteristic themes and cross-domain integration through the establishment of the “Digital Marketing Center’, the “AI Training Academy”, and “Unmanned Vehicle Learning Group”, which will be applied in local creation contents. In 2019, the school received financial aid from the Issue-oriented Narrative Innovation Teaching Development Plan of the Ministry of Education to create diverse course module, coupled with language teaching with task-based activities as the course design axis. This will in turn enhance students’ narrative ability and accomplish the implementation of a diversity of issues. Concerning teachers’ teaching improvement, in two years, there have been up to 60 biennial teaching implementation research plan applications, indicating the established practice of teaching innovation has achieved initial results. In addition to continuing the existing teacher empowerment and teacher support mechanisms, greater emphasis is given to OKR (Objective Key Result) under the innovative teaching model. Additionally, the teaching facilities and environment have been optimized, links with senior high school courses have been expanded, and the pilot “Freshmen Project” program has been conducted to gain an early insight into professional knowledge required for the field of study.
Develop school characteristics:
The development towards the direction of internationalization, specialization, and education-job match will optimize campus information internationalization related facilities, such as overseas recruitment, student exchanges overseas, and other systems. At the same time, links with international student associations will be strengthened, and the participation of students on campus will be expanded. Additionally, Asia Summer University’s all-English summer courses, international co-creation and co-learning courses, Chinese and cultural experiential camps, and other international learning resource platforms will continue to be conducted. The school will be actively involved in international education organizations such as the Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET), the University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific (UMAP), etc. to develop regional international education alliances, establish overseas cooperative recruitment channels, and enhance the learning and research horizons. The school’s featured fashion design brand PRAXES will construct a situational exercise model through the main brand “PRAXES”, the sub-brand “Project”, and “praxes‧life” garment series that emphasizes the modern lifestyle in order to foster integrative design talents and move towards the brand market development goals of Tokyo and Japan. This will enable all work departments to conduct market observations and learning from different task-based perspectives. Further, in response to the Industry 4.0 and AI industrial upgrade related R&D needs, the technology assisted design plan model will be strengthened to enhance product segmentation and the performance of value-added interactive designs. The school will continue to build a pro-industry-university environment, construct the “R&D result and industry-academia matching platform. The “industry classroom will be deepened, thereby providing education-job match courses and channels. The virtual industrial workshops and practice experience field equipment will be improved, and innovative production lines of dried fruit will be set up to become diversified product development center. The “future classroom” will be established to establish close links with the industry through demonstration teaching. AWS Educate incorporated into courses will be popularized, and AWS Academy will be employed to foster industrial professionalism. Furthermore, the AWS Educate Career Pathway will be constructed to obtain balance between popularization and professionalism. The “teaching” and “learning” of cloud computing technology will be driven by the career path of talents.
Fulfill social responsibilities:
From 2020 to 2022, the school will closely adhere to the spirit of “local links and talent cultivation”. Continually adhering by the three focuses of “healthy living and economic autonomy”, “green ecology and rural village reconstruction”, and “academic and research momentum and laying down the roots of services” with the campus location as the implementation base, cross-departmental professional knowledge-based collaboration and the implementation of innovative teaching and social services will be carried out to highlight the social value. The College of Human Ecology, Shih Chien University, will continue to uphold the goals of “healthy living and economic autonomy”. With resource-deprived communities in Taipei City and New Taipei City as the targets and by flipping the teaching methods in respective departments, community organization empowerment, the strengthened care of community elders, children, and adolescents, improvement on the nutritional intake of elders, children, and adolescents, and the development of community industrial links will be achieved. “Green ecology and rural village reconstruction” will focus on “drone swarm flying D cube courses”, and “cultural tourism courses” will be the focuses in jointly developing suitable socioeconomic plans.
Through the humanistic and ecological field features, innovative community development through concerted efforts will be achieved. The humanistic and innovative practical courses and activities jointly designed by teachers and students will lead to the creation of “value for stakeholders and socioeconomic value”. “Academic and research momentum and laying down roots in services” will be facilitated by the continuous operations of “Taipei City Parent-child Care and Friendly Childcare Center”, the “Musical Instrument Bank” Plan of the Ministry of Education, and other projects. This will further aid in executing the USR seeding and sprouting plans, thus expanding the breadth and depth of social implementation.
Enhance higher education publicity
Deepened support of disadvantaged students will continue to be carried out. With the anchorage of “Three-Industry, the co-promotion of Four-Structuration, and the development of Five Forces＂, basic schooling and economic support will be provided, while the mental and physical qualities will be stabilized to further aid in various learning development, thereby achieving “consolidation and empowerment. Through living and emotional guidance, community service learning activities and the cultivation of humanistic care, self-acceptance and respect for others can be learned to achieve self-realization. Through the course of multiple learning and result presentation, the learning motives and strategies can be grasped to achieve “independent learning”; professional knowledge can be cultivated, and licenses can be obtained to enhance empowerment competitions and achieve “certification empowerment”. Finally, with strengthening workplace competitiveness as the goal, practical development” can be achieved. In terms of schools affairs governance, the school affairs database has been integrated. Through the school research system performance evaluation mechanism, and empirical analysis, self-monitoring can be strengthened, while information pertaining to school affairs governance is implemented and periodically disclosed.