Large scale business-academia collaboration in master education course

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.