Tokyo Tech Visionary Project Lecture Series – Interdisciplinary Learning: Why and How?
by Dr. Satoko Fukahori

Tokyo Tech Visionary Project is a compulsory course for the first-year students at Tokyo Tech. It encourages self-discovery and aims to motivate students to set individual goals so that they can envision their own path throughout the four years of engineering studies at the undergraduate level. The course alternates between lectures and group work. Throughout the course, students will listen to some talks about the non-engineering field that have not been encountered yet.

After the 1st lecture by Prof. Fudano who taught the meaning of Liberal Arts, followed by the 2nd lecture by Mr. Matthew S. Sussman who talked about the concept of Global Leadership, the 3rd lecture was held on April 20 by inviting Dr. Satoko Fukahori who taught the students about the significance of Interdisciplinary Learning  

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 1. Lecture

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Dr. Fukahori began her lecture by explaining the need for an interdisciplinary approach by showing the picture of Pixar Animation Studios Atrium. Then, the students were asked to give their opinion on what is interesting from the studio. Some students raised some funny comments, such as on the cute cartoon characters they saw in the picture, however, they were not able to identify the essence of why the studio is designed with a very large hall between two walls.

It was the idea of Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Pixar, to create the big hall as the main part of the animation studio where computer animation experts and artists could collaborate and work together in creating Pixar’s outstanding 3D animated characters.

“Technology alone is not enough – it’s technology married with the liberal arts, married with humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing” is a famous quote from Steve Jobs that could well describe the need for an interdisciplinary approach in dealing with complex problems the world is facing today.  Dr. Fukahori explained that the example of world’s complex problems can be the climate change. It cannot be understood comprehensively without considering the influence of the oceans, solar radiation, atmospheric constituents, transport processes, land use, emission of pollutants, and other anthropogenic practices.

The definitions of Multi-disciplinarity, DSC_8191Inter-disciplinarity, and Trans-disciplinarity were discussed in the lecture. Inter- and Trans- disciplinarities can be considered as a bridge between disciplines, and a means of uniting universities with the world outside, including the non-academic parties such as the government, local community, and industries.

In the end, Dr. Fukahori stressed in her talk that it is important to become integrative thinkers who can see connections in seemingly disparate fields of study and draw on a wide range of knowledge to develop new solutions and make decisions.

2. Group Work

The discussion class was conducted on April 25. As usual, the whole class was divided into 3 groups, with each group having 4-5 members each. They have to discuss the things they have learned from the talk of Dr. Fukahori using their Reflection sheets and then put the important points of their discussion on the entakun papers. The group discussions are shown in the pictures below. After discussion within the group, each group’s representative gave a short presentation about their opinion on the issues mentioned in the lecture.

group discussion

A quite long debate among students happened when one of them asked about what is Transdisciplinary Engineering Major. Other students were also questioning whether in the future the world still needs a specialist. Moreover, they discussed what make an engineer become a Transdisciplinary Expert while in fact there is no specific license or clear border of Transdisciplinary itself.

For example, Jeremy Gavriel, one of the students, gave his opinion regarding Transdisciplinary Education.

Pursuing a specific major is like planting a big tree, and then whatever we learn later on are the small branches that will grow on it. On the other hand, obtaining Transdisciplinary Education is like having a strong ‘knowledge’ foundation, and any major we engage in afterward resemble the buildings that will be constructed upon it.”

Refer to this page to see his complete opinion.

The discussion has to be stopped due to time limitation. It was good to see how the students could synthesize their thoughts and ideas and finally come up with some conclusions.

Guest Speaker Profile:

Dr. Fukahori is currently the Director of Department for Higher Education Research and Tuning JAPAN National Centre at the National Institute for Educational Policy Research (NIER), Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. This is the second time she was invited as the guest speaker. In 2016, she delivered her talk about the meaning of Education for the first batch GSEP students.

Written by Farid Triawan

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