LARGE SCALE BUSINESS-ACADEMIA COLLABORATION

IN MASTER EDUCATION COURSE

Noriaki Sakamoto, Mitsuaki Fukase, Tsunenori Mine, Shigeru Kusakabe

Tsuneo Nakanishi, Yoich Omori, Mohammad Mesbah Uddin

Keijiro Araki, Akira Fukuda, Hiroto Yasuura

Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University

744 Moto-oka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka-shi, Japan

Teruaki Kitasuka

Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kumamoto University

2-39-1 Kurokami, Kumamoto, Japan

Keywords: Business-academia collaboration, PBL, Practical education, Internship.

Abstract: The progress of Information Technology, which is the infrastructure of an advanced information society, is

remarkable and has the enormous impact on our daily life. On the other hand, it has been pointed out by the

industry in Japan that there is a lack of highly skilled Information and Communication Technology

personnel who can lead the next generation. In order to address this issue, the Graduate School of

Information Science and Electrical Engineering in Kyushu University has established Social Information

System Engineering education course. Since April 2007, we have started practical education program with

an objective to foster world class leaders who have extraordinary technical skill, basic knowledge and sense

of ethics. This effort is steadily progressing by the collaboration with various companies through Nippon

Keidanren with support of Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. There have

been several findings in 1) Project Based Learning, 2) omnibus courses, 3) long term internship, and 4)

curriculum improvements during the planning and execution of this program. This paper describes the

content, method, interim result and evaluation of this education course. We also discuss the challenges that

need to be resolved.

1 INTRODUCTION

Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

is rapidly evolving and has a significant effect on the

social infrastructure. On the other hand, there is a

remarkable shortage of highly skilled ICT personnel

who can lead the industry. It has been pointed out

that the university education does not meet the

requirements of industry. In order for Japan to be

competitive in the globalized environment, it is

imperative that the industry and university

collaborate all together and foster highly skilled ICT

personnel. To address this issue, the Graduate

School of Information Science and Electrical

Engineering (ISEE) in Kyushu University has

started Social Information System Engineering

(SISE) education course which is based on the large

scale collaboration with Nippon Keidanren

(Keidanren). It is the federation of economic

organization and covers most of the big corporations

in Japan. Its members include 1,315 major

companies that represent various industries in Japan.

Keidanren chose Kyushu University as the partner of

its education program to foster highly skilled ICT

personnel (Keidanren, 2005) and Ministry of

Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology

(MEXT) selected Kyushu University as the hub

159

Sakamoto N., Fukase M., Mine T., Kusakabe S., Nakanishi T., Omori Y., Mesbah Uddin M., Araki K., Fukuda A., Yasuura H. and Kitasuka T. (2009).

LARGE SCALE BUSINESS-ACADEMIA COLLABORATION IN MASTER EDUCATION COURSE.

In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 159-166

DOI: 10.5220/0001972101590166

 SciTePress

university in the education program to bring up

leading Information Technology specialist (Ministry,

2006). The characteristics of SISE are, 1) master

education course through large scale business-

academia collaboration, 2) practical education to

meet social needs, 3) full support by Keidanren and

its cooperating companies, and 4) alliance among

partner universities. We have started the preparation

on May, 2006, established project office on

November, 2006, and started SISE education course

on April, 2007.

This paper describes curriculum overview,

interim results and lessons learned in SISE education

course. Chapter 2 outlines the objective, contents

and characteristics of this course. Chapter 3

describes the interim result and evaluation. Chapter

4 discusses the challenges. Chapter 5 is dedicated to

the findings and Chapter 6 is the summary.

2 CURRICULUM OF

EDUCATION COURSE

2.1 Education Course Overview

(1) Issues on Conventional Curriculum

The conventional curriculum at graduate school in

Japan is based on classroom lecture and is mainly

focused on learning the theory and technical

knowledge, which is important. However, the

conventional curriculum is not enough to develop

the insight, communication, analysis, and solution

capability to accommodate the rapidly progressing

ICT environment. Especially, Project Based

Learning (PBL), which is effective in developing the

practical capabilities, has not been commonly

introduced in the conventional curriculum.

(2) Objective of SISE Education Course

In this education course, we are trying to foster the

students, who have 1) the professional skills that are

required immediately in the software research and

development, 2) the insights toward the changing

ICT and social environments, 3) the flexibility to

execute software development, and 4) the capability

to lead the corporation or society in the future.

(3) Curriculum Overview

During the preparation phase of this education

course, staffs and instructors from universities and

cooperating companies got together and had through

discussions about the curriculum overview and the

details of each course. As the result, we have

decided to introduce the practical training, human

skills development and ICT sophistication courses

on top of the conventional basic technology and

theoretical courses. Considering the strength and

weakness of university and cooperating companies,

it was agreed that the university instructors should

be in charge of teaching the basic technology and

theoretical courses and instructors from cooperating

companies should be in charge of teaching the

practical courses and omnibus courses. Figure 1

shows the curriculum overview and Figure 2 shows

the curriculum schedule of this education course. In

order to establish the alliance with other universities

Foster the basic belief to act

considering the future of our society

Master Thesis

Training for leadership and

communication skills

PBL on Real Problems

Courses for practical subjects

Internship

PBL on System

Development

PBL on Advanced

System

Real

PBL

(Example)

• Prototype of electronic key rental

system

• One village one portal hosting system

• Tools for hardware design integration

Courses for ICT sophistication

Knowledge for ICT, like software, hardware and network area

Enterprise systemEmbedded system

Courses for technology and theory

(Example): Advanced Topics on ICT

PBL: Project Based Learning

(Example): Advanced Topics on

Leaders of Information Society

Courses for ICT human skill

Figure 1: Curriculum overview.

First year

First semester

PBL basic,

Java，

SQL，DB,

UML,

Documen-

tation

-Advanced Topics

on ICT

-Advanced Topics

on Info. Sys.

Internship

Summer

PBL on Real

Problems

PBL on

Advanced

System

Advanced Project

Management, etc

S/W Development

Engineering

Social & Historical

Aspects of IT

- Advanced Topics on

Information Society

- Design Aspects of

Future Information

Infrastructure

- Advanced Topics on

Leaders of Information

Society, etc

-Advanced

Embedded

System II

-Advanced

Information &

Communication

Network, etc

Advanced

Information Security

Joint PBL

Forum

Assessment &

Presentation

Basic ability

Master Thesis

Speciality

PBL on

System

Development

Presentation

Courses for ICT

sophistication /

human skill /

technology and theory

Courses for practical

subjects/Master Thesis

First year

Second semester

Second year

First semester

Second year

Second semester

SummerSpring

Practical and

Planning ability

Leading ability

Mini project

Figure 2: Curriculum schedule.

and to educate as many students as possible, we

asked other universities in Kyushu area to join this

education program. As the result, Kyushu Institute

of Technology (KIT), Fukuoka University,

Kumamoto University and Miyazaki University

joined this education course as our partners. We also

established the management structure to run this

education course jointly with cooperating companies

CSEDU 2009 - International Conference on Computer Supported Education

160

under Keidanren. The management committee,

which is held quarterly, is responsible for defining

the strategy and giving the direction to this

education course. The project office is responsible

for executing the curriculum and running this

education course. Advisory committee and

evaluation committee, both of which are held once a

year, give the advice and evaluation to this education

course from broader perspectives. By establishing

these management structures, we can improve our

curriculum through the repeated Plan-Do-Check-

Action (PDCA) cycle.

2.2 Project Based Learning (PBL)

PBL is the way of learning where students are

assigned the actual project to execute and take the

initiative in solving problems. It is very effective in

developing the practical abilities. There are several

papers which discuss PBL in ICT education

(Matsuzawa, 2007, Itoh, 2007, Hanai, 2007). Here,

we discuss the purpose and contents of PBL in this

education course.

(1) Positioning of PBL and its Purpose

As indicated in Figure 1, PBL is positioned as the

center of practical courses and is mandatory for the

students. The purpose is to have students acquire the

capabilities of problem-solving, logical thinking,

insight and flexibility. Two systems engineers have

been assigned as the full-time PBL instructors to

this education course from the cooperating

companies under Keidanren.

(2) Contents

In PBL course, students learn the project

management process, starting from requirement

definition, design, coding, testing and all the way to

project maintenance phase. They are given the

opportunity to develop abilities to define, prioritize,

analyze and solve various problems that are

encountered during the project. They also learn the

importance of self-learning, teamwork, time

management and communication. There are various

projects, like the international project, actual project

provided by cooperating local company, and

advanced technology project to establish cloud

computing environments. At the end of PBL course,

Keidanren forum is held for the students to

demonstrate their project result in front of many

participants from cooperating companies and related

universities.

As shown in Figure 2, PBL is performed in three

stages, which are PBL on System Development,

PBL on Real Problems and PBL on Advanced

System. It was designed so that students can

experience the project step by step depending on

their abilities and can repeat the project management

activities, which is unique in this education course.

2.3 Omnibus Courses

(1) Overview

In this education course, we offer five omnibus

courses, where the executives, senior managers and

technical leaders from cooperating companies give

the lectures on various ICT topics. The lectures

emphasize what is going on in ICT industry front

end, how it is connected to the social infrastructure

and how it is changing the world, in order to

motivate the students and give them broader

perspectives as the ICT engineers. In the first half of

2008, total 22 instructors from cooperating

companies gave the lectures.

(2) Management Structures and Features of

Omnibus Course

In omnibus lectures, we encourage interactive

lectures by introducing the drills and discussion time.

We also organize get-together after the lecture is

over so that students and instructors can have casual

conversation in the relaxed atmosphere, which is

effective in motivating the students. At the end of

the course, we conduct the panel discussion between

students and instructors. All the omnibus lectures are

broadcasted to the partner universities through the

Internet.

We established a new way to manage the

operation of omnibus courses. In order to avoid the

duplication and to ensure the accuracy of lectures,

we created a review team which consists of

instructors from university and cooperating

companies. The instructor, who is in charge of the

lecture, prepares the class materials two weeks

before the lecture. The review team reviews

materials from the view point of 1) conformance to

the course objective, 2) duplication with other

lectures, 3) adequacy of terms used in the material.

Then, it is distributed to the students a week before

the lecture through WebCT (Web Course Tool)

(Kyushu, 2008). Students can download the

materials using their PCs. After the lecture, students

and instructors are asked to fill in the questionnaire

respectively. The results are shared among all the

instructors to improve the quality of lectures. By

LARGE SCALE BUSINESS-ACADEMIA COLLABORATION IN MASTER EDUCATION COURSE

161

establishing this operation, we are able to 1)

maintain the quality of lectures, 2) avoid content’s

duplication among the lectures, 3) have students

prepare for the class and 4) provide instructors

useful information beforehand.

2.4 Long–term Internship

In the summer of the first year, long-term internship

is held, which is fully supported by Keidanren and

its cooperating companies. In 2008, 24 companies

provided 100 themes. This internship is the part of

practical ICT education and aims to 1) acquire

practical skills and knowledge, 2) enhance human

skill, 3) motivate students as ICT specialists and 4)

have students notice their weak points. This

internship lasts for one to two months, which is

more intensive than the conventional internship in

Japan that is usually one or two weeks.

The students participate in the internship as the

members of real projects and go through the

system/product development, design, and quality

evaluation phase. Themes of internship are

published to the students through portal site on

Internet and each student applies for his/her

favourite theme. After the interview with company

staff to understand the contents, all of the students

start the internship when the summer vacation

begins. During the internship, the Keidanren Joint

Forum is held in Tokyo area to provide the chance

for students, company and university staffs to get

together and communicate each other. This is a very

good opportunities for the students to talk with

variety of people and broaden their sights.

Also, during the internship, university staffs visit

the companies to see the status of internship and to

motivate students. It is beneficial for the university

teachers to understand how the internship is

conducted in individual company and how the

student is performing his/her theme.

The students’ presentation session is held after

the internship is over. We invite the cooperating

companies’ staffs and other university teachers to

this session. All the students make presentations to

demonstrate their achievement and the lessons

learned during the internship.

3 INTERIM RESULT AND

EVALUATION

Although it is only one year and half since we

started this education course, there are many

findings and outcomes which will be described in

this chapter.

3.1 Project based Learning (PBL)

In this section, we discuss the PBL on System

Development and PBL on Real Problems, which are

held in the first semester and the second semester of

the first year respectively.

(1) PBL on System Development

One of the big problems was the variety of skill

levels and basic knowledge of the students. We have

decided to teach project management,

documentation, Java, SQL and UML during the PBL

course. Actual project was conducted using a

company’s real case developed for their employee

training. The students were given the source code of

Web book store application programs and were

instructed to create the project documentations,

which we call the reverse engineering. By doing so,

students could learn the necessary skills and

knowledge depending on their technical level, which

was very effective.

Before the team assignment, we conducted a

programming test and preference inventory survey.

Based on the result, the teams were created (4 to 6

members) so that each team has similar technical

and communication skill level. This was very

effective to promote active communication within

the team. During the project, each student was asked

to rotate their role, like project manager, quality

manager, configuration manager, so that they can

understand the importance of each role.

At the end of PBL course, we tried a mini project

where students were given a task to improve

usability interface of anything in everyday life and

to create a prototype. All the teams decided their

project and started to work very hard to solve the

problems. Though it was only two weeks project,

students had a precious experience to discuss and

work together. The presentation session we had at

the end of mini project was a success. 70 people

participated including university staffs, students and

cooperating company staffs. One of the programs

was nominated as the candidate for patent

application and the other program is now used as the

online questionnaire system in this education course.

The mini project proved to be very effective for the

students to learn how to take initiative in finding and

solving problems.

CSEDU 2009 - International Conference on Computer Supported Education

162

(2) PBL on Real Problems

This PBL course focuses on the real projects in the

university and external company. A variety of

themes were prepared like enterprise system project,

embedded system project, international project.

Students chose their favourite project and the

projects were started. The instructor from

cooperating company managed all the project teams

and reviewed project status extensively. The

university and local company staffs played roles of

customers and took care of the technical aspects of

the projects. At the end of the projects, we held a

Joint PBL Forum on March, 2008, in Tokyo together

with Keidanren, Tsukuba University and KIT, where

the students made presentations and demonstrated

their outcomes. Total 121 people attended the forum

including about 60 people from cooperating

companies of Keidanren. It proved that the students

are making progress steadily. This forum was very

effective for the students to acquire presentation and

communication skills and to improve their

motivation.

3.2 Omnibus Courses

After the ominbus courses were over, we conducted

students’ survey. All the courses scored more than

80 out of 100, which indicate students were satisfied

with omnibus courses. Some of the typical

comments were that 1) the lectures based on real

business cases were very convincing and interesting,

2) the interactive group discussion was exciting, and

3) they could broaden their perspectives because of

the various themes in the courses. The high scores

and these comments show that omnibus lectures are

highly effective in motivating students and

broadening their perspectives. However, there was a

concern on the disruptions of Internet lines to

broadcast the lectures to partner universities.

At the end of each lecture, we asked the

instructors from cooperating companies to let us

know their insights. Their typical comments were

that 1) students were very active in group discussion,

and 2) students were very honest in the get-together

after the lecture. They raised a concern on the lack

of proactive questions from the students in addition

to the disruptions of Internet lines.

We had several new trials during the omnibus

courses, such as 1) joint panel discussions among

students and company executives to discuss the

future of ICT and society, 2) introduction of the

instructors by students based on their preliminary

exploration, and 3) publication of the lecture notes

through Intranet. All of these trials were very

effective for the students to learn proactively and to

enhance their communication capabilities.

3.3 Long–term Internship

All the 29 and 19 students participated in the

internship in 2007 and in 2008, respectively. We

tried several new approaches as follows.

(1) Encouraging Students to Take Initiatives

Before starting the internship, students were

encouraged to talk to the company staff about

nondisclosure agreement, terms and conditions,

which was a good opportunities for the students to

negotiate in the real business situation. At the

Keidanren Joint Forum described in section 2.4, the

students from Kyushu Universities, Tsukuba

Universities and KIT discussed the current status

and problems of this education course. They made

proposals to this education course, which were

highly appreciated by the university and company

staffs.

(2) Visiting the Companies by University Staffs

During the internship, we visited all the companies,

which accepted the students, in order to see the

status of internship and to discuss with the company

staffs. By doing so, we could obtain useful findings

such as 1) matching is very important between

student’s skills and required skills, 2) more than two

months are required to acquire professional skills, 3)

basic business manner is required. These visits were

quite beneficial for the university staffs to

understand the problems and challenges as well as to

motivate the students on site.

(3) Students Forum to Report the Result of

Internship

The students’ presentation session was held to share

the experience and findings after the internship were

over. The students gave positive opinions like 1) the

importance of team work and time management, 2)

skills that need to be enhanced, and 3) the

importance of business manners. The long-term

internship is quite beneficial and is a precious

experience for the students, where they could work

with professional engineers and students from other

universities in the actual business environment.

(4) Evaluation by Company Representatives

We asked representatives of each company to

evaluate student’s performance. According to the

evaluation in 2008, 95% of the students could

LARGE SCALE BUSINESS-ACADEMIA COLLABORATION IN MASTER EDUCATION COURSE

163

complete the projects in a given period. 90% of the

students satisfied the required skill level. 53% of the

students performed the projects as expected and 37%

of the students exceeded the expectations. They

rated 74% of the students were aggressive. Though it

was pointed out that the students are not proactive in

asking questions in the omnibus class, this

evaluation indicates that students have developed

aggressive attitude, which was one of the positive

outcome of this internship.

(5) Benefits of Long-term Internship

Compared to the conventional internship in Japan,

which is 1 to 2 weeks, the long-term internship can

provide real project environment for the students to

work with company professionals. The students

were treated as the members of project team and

they worked very hard to accomplish their mission.

There were many findings from the students’ side,

too. The students became aware what is required in

the real business environment, what skills are

lacking to them and what they need to do in the

future. All of these are the benefits of long-term

internship.

3.4 Business-academia Joint Camp to

Discuss Curriculum

A very unique approach in this education course is

the joint camp to discuss the contents of omnibus

lectures, PBL and internship in addition to the

overall curriculum and outstanding issues of this

education course. This camp is held twice a year and

lasts for two days, where university staffs (about 15

people), instructors/executives from cooperating

company (about 20 people) and the students (about 5

people) attend. By organizing this camp, 1) we can

have the common understanding on the contents and

objectives of overall curriculum, 2) instructors can

share the purpose of omnibus courses and eliminate

the duplication, 3) we can confirm the common

challenges of this education course, and 4)

acknowledge the sense of unity as a team. These are

very valuable and essential in running this education

course. This approach can be regarded as a new way

of doing faculty development in the university.

3.5 Overall Evaluation

Since April, 2007, when this education course

started, we have endeavoured to foster highly skilled

ICT personnel by the continuous improvements of

the curriculum, which were described so far. Table 1

shows the overall evaluation after one and half

year’s experience. Five evaluation items were picked

up as human resource development and three

evaluation items were picked up as curriculum

management. Eight major action items in this

education course and their evaluations were

summarized in Table 1. The establishment of large

scale business-academia collaboration, which was

implemented as management committee, project

office, advisory committee, joint camp and various

support from cooperating companies, was very

effective in performing and enhancing the practical

education. PBL and omnibus courses, which were

taught by the instructors from cooperating

companies, were very useful in strengthening the

students’ practical skills and broadening their

perspectives. Long-term internship provided

excellent opportunities for the students to experience

the projects in the real environments and to improve

their motivation. By utilizing WebCT and

broadcasting the lecture, the students in the partner

universities were able to participate in the omnibus

classes.

Naturally, the evaluation of an education course

should be done based on the performance of students

after their graduation. However, we believe that the

education course by large scale business-academia

collaboration is very effective and can improve

students’ skills, execution capability and proactive

attitude tremendously.

Table 1: Overall evaluation.

Specialty skill

Human skill

Practical skill

and project

erience

Broader

perspective

and flexibilit

Student's

motivation

Execution of

practical

curriculum

Inspiring unity

as a education

team

Joint

education with

partner

universit

Large scale business-

academia collaboration

EVE E

Instructors from

cooperating companies

E E VE VE VE E E

Joint camp and

management committee

VE VE

4 PBL courses EVEVEEVE E E

Omnibus courses and

get-together

E E VE VE E E

6 Long term internship

E E VE VE VE E E

Partnering with other

universities

EVE

Utilizing WebCT and

broadcasting to partner

universities

E：

ery effective E：Effective

Evaluation item

Major actions

Human resource development Curriculum management

4 CHALLENGES IN THE

FUTURE

We see the challenges in the future as follows.

CSEDU 2009 - International Conference on Computer Supported Education

164

(1) Time Management between PBL and

Research Activity for Master Thesis

Most of the students have tendency to work hard

beyond the PBL class hours extensively. Many

students are suffering from the workload balance

between PBL and master thesis. This issue should be

considered including the structure of this education

course.

(2) Establishment of Sustainable Education

System

Although we spend much manpower and time on

this education program, it is imperative to utilize our

resources more appropriately so that we can

continue this program and educate more effectively.

Also, it is important to establish the way to evaluate

the growth of the students.

5 FINDINGS

Here are the major findings that were derived from

the experience in last one and half years’ experience

in this education course.

(1) The Importance of Information Sharing and

Mutual Agreement on the Direction of Education

Program

We believe that large scale business-academia

collaboration in the university education like this

program was the first trial in Japan. We knew that

university staffs have strength in teaching the basic

theory and technology. On the other hand, company

staffs have strength in practical education. Through

the repeated discussions, we decided to take

advantages of both sides and designed the

curriculum to achieve the common goal of fostering

the internationally competitive ICT personnel. We

found that it is very important to have common

understanding and agreement on the direction of

program in order to perform the large scale business-

academia collaboration successfully.

(2) The Importance of Creating the Process to

Ensure the Consistent Curriculum

In order to maintain the consistency of curriculum,

we organized the management committee, project

office and two days joint camp. In addition, we

established the review process for the omnibus

classes to ensure the consistency among the omnibus

lectures. All of these processes proved to be very

effective.

(3) The Importance to set up the Process to

Enhance Students’ Motivation

We found that the students are strongly motivated

when they can contact with external communities

and personnel. To this purpose, it was very effective

to set up the get-together with instructors from

cooperating companies, the joint forum during the

internship and at the end of PBL.

6 SUMMARY

In this paper, we described the endeavour to foster

the highly skilled ICT personnel in Graduate School

of Kyushu University, trial of large scale business-

academia collaboration, effectiveness and findings.

We have a lot of challenges ahead of us to deploy

this education system to other universities and to

make it sustainable, but we are determined to

improve this new approach.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Ministry of Education,

Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for

supporting this education program. Also, we would

like to thank Professor Mitsuo Tateiba (previous

dean of Information Science and Electrical

Engineering in Kyushu University, current president

of Ariake National College of Technology) for his

dedicated management support to start up this

education course. Lastly, we would like to thank

advisory committee, management committee,

Nippon Keidanren, member companies of Keidanren,

local companies, staffs in Kyushu University and

staffs in partner universities (Kyushu Institute of

Technology, Fukuoka University, Kumamoto

University and Miyazaki University) for all their

support and cooperation to develop and run this

education course.

REFERENCES

Keidanren, 2005. “Fostering Highly Skilled ICT

Personnel through Business-academia Collaboration”.

http://www.keidanren.or.jp/japanese/policy/2005/039/inde

x.html

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and

Technology, 2006. “Education Program to Foster Leading

IT Specialist”. http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou

/it/h18.htm#top

LARGE SCALE BUSINESS-ACADEMIA COLLABORATION IN MASTER EDUCATION COURSE

165

Matsuzawa, Yoshiaki, et al., 2007. “A result of Trial

Education for Software Engineers through University-

Industry Collaboration and Project-based Learning”,

IPSJ Journal, Vol.48, No.8, pp.2767-2780.

Itoh , Atsushi, et al., 2007. “Issues on Business-academia

Collaboration in the Development of Educational

Course; For the Design, Development and

Implementation of Practical Cell Phone Software”,

IPSJ Journal, Vol.48, No.2, pp.846-857.

Hanai, Toshihiro, et al., 2007. ”A Bi-directional Practical

Education through Industry-University Cooperation”,

IPSJ Journal, Vol.48, No.2, pp.832-845.

Kyushu University, 2008. “Web Course Tool”.

https://webct.kyushu-u.ac.jp/info/info_webct.html

CSEDU 2009 - International Conference on Computer Supported Education

166