The Current Situation and Future Development of the General Education Center

The Current Situation and Future Development of the General Education Center

Ⅰ、History

　　According to the rules from the Ministry of Education, NTUA opens common required courses. However, these affairs have been solved not by chairman, but by office of the dean of studies. As a result, the president started to apply the full-time professor to serve as the chairman in 1998.
　　In order to make the ideal of perfect people comes true, since the school year of 89, the name of “common courses” has become “General Education Center.”

Ⅱ、Goals

　　The university is the palace of the truth, and art has the strength of promoting the soul upward. Therefore, the keynote of the central teaching goal is to carry out the general education of the humanities, and the target is to practice the ideal of educating perfect persons, expect establishing a deeper and broad foundation for the artistic education, creating the development of physical and mental balance, giving consideration to knowledge and personality, equally emphasizing specialties and broadness, criticizing the society, and leading intellectuals of modern times through the promotion of students’ humanities accomplishment.

Ⅲ、Courses

　　Liberal studies and artistic courses are complimentary. Art classes from every department don’t contain liberal studies because they emphasize on Social Science and the Natural Science. In humanity, we want to connect literature, history, and philosophy with art. We hope students can have balanced development and make students understand it through courses. We want to let students realize not only how to be independent people in the modern society by themselves (psychology or physiology) but also the social environment as well as natural world. To respond to the school’s development and social transition, we are trying to implement course redesigning as follows:

A. Redesigning Courses:

　　The Center has reduced required courses and increased elective ones to provide students with multiple choices. There are totally 30 credits in this course design. Besides the 8 credits in language fields, which are all required courses, there are 12 credits in basic theory fields and 10 credits in general fields, which are all elective courses.

Mainstream Courses

B. Enriching Courses:

　　To correct the parochialism resulting from students taking only professional courses, the Center has designed a variety of courses. The courses in general fields are divided into the following 3 groups: Natural Sciences, Humanities, and Social Sciences. According to this division, the Center provides a series of courses which altogether constitute the main academic issues of the above groups. Each series of courses is made up of courses that are related. And if students show an approving response to this design, the Center will enlarge the series of courses into a ‘program,’ which consists of more related courses.

C. Military Education Courses and Service Courses:

　　To cultivate a skillful and virtuous individual and to cultivate the habits of laboring and serving others, the Center provides service courses which are integrated with military education courses. Professional military education courses are designed in the form of a series of national defense education courses, which are elective courses for all the students.

D. Reinforcing Teaching Design and Competency-Based English Teaching:

　　To allocate resources reasonably and to execute curriculum-division, the Center offers basic courses on computer application, engraving, and languages. And each department of NTUA is responsible for its respective advanced courses. Entering NTUA, each undergraduate is required to take an exam on English competency. According to the results of this exam, different levels of English courses—from the basic through the intermediate to the advanced—are designed so that learning may be competency-based. In the teaching of Chinese, the emphasis is on reading and writing, with the purpose to enhance students’ reading and writing abilities.

E. Arts and General Education Courses:

　　In spite of the fact that there are no professional arts courses in this design, the Center will come up with seminars, community activities, lectures (on special topics), and reading groups to promote all kinds of arts, which is the very devotion of NTUA. Besides, the Center will also provide cross-disciplinary courses, in which all kinds of arts can be integrated.

 

Ⅳ、Teachers

　　14 full-time teachers serve in the center. These teachers work in eight clubs in the center, including Chinese, foreign languages (which includes English, Japanese, and French), history, constitution, education psychology, computer, arts, and liberal studies. They need to be responsible for teaching schedule and direction to teaching. In this way, they can help to study and improve education.
The full-time teachers contain 1 professor, 7 associate professors, 0 assistant professor, 6 Instructors, and 2 teaching assistants. The full-time teachers are totally 14 people.

Full-time Teachers

Ⅴ、Equipment

　　This center is located the fourth floor in the teaching building. Now there are 1central office, 1 teacher restroom, 1 conference room, 1 small discussion room and 10 teacher’s laboratories (every 2 people in one room).
　　Offices are equipped with a photocopier, a fast printer, 4 portable receivers, an epidiascope, 2 ordinary projectors, 3 Single slide projectors, 2 slide projectors, 2 movable TV sets, 2 movable single slide projectors, 2 notebooks, a digital camera and a few VCD or DVD or books to borrow.

Ⅵ、The Prospect

　　The center will spare no effort to promote the humanities of accomplishment of the school students from the following aspect:

（Ⅰ）Molding the model of the specialty of the general education: establish the specialty image of the general education in the campus, through the improvement of the general education curriculums, the promotion of the research quality, the popularization of the ideal of the general education.

（Ⅱ） Improving teaching method: improve the teaching quality through the periodical deliberation, the exchange of experiences, and the introduction of new knowledge.

（Ⅲ） Updating teaching equipment: replace the present devices and introduce new video and audio equipment.

（Ⅳ） Implementing course redesigning: reduce required courses and design a series of related courses.

（Ⅴ） Promoting research quality: advocate the research atmosphere, circulate the channel of opinion and effectively develop the scholastic research atmosphere.

（Ⅵ） Developing teaching resources: link up with the inside and outside school resources and quote newest media like long-distance teaching, and expand teaching effect.

（Ⅶ） Enhancing inter-collegiate exchange: further inter-scholastic aspect and resources on curriculum, teachers, experience, research results sharing.