Japan Electronics College

Today, Mary visited Japan Electronics College, as part of the Fulbright IEA group. JEC is an example of "senmon gakko," or professional training colleges. Since there are more professional training colleges in Japan than 2-year colleges and 4-year colleges put together, it was an interesting visit.

After the customary exchange of business cards with the president, vice president, director of educational affairs, director of placement, and chief of the international exchange office, the president told us about the college.

JEC has 3,100 students, 110 FT instructors, and 160 PT instructors. It offers one to four-year programs in technology, such as programming, computer game design, and electronic music. The job placement rate is quite good, 91% - apparently some university graduates go on to attend a professional training college to get practical skills (and, it follows, a job).

The president noted that they have professional development to keep their faculty's technological knowledge up to date, but they don't have professional development in the realm of pedagogy. He was interested in hearing about U.S. teaching centers.

After the talk, we got a tour. Everything was in one building, so it was very different from many American campuses.

The picture below shows a systems engineering class. The students are divided up into 9 groups, and each group is designing a system. Like most of the classes I saw, there were 2 instructors in the room to go around and answer questions. (One of the instructors is standing to the far right.)

I asked the instructor how the groups were formed, and he noted that they are assigned by the instructor. I asked the other instructor if students do evaluations, and he noted that yes, he is evaluated at the end of the term (and pantomimed that he was a little nervous about it).

The next class was called a "practice room" for the systems department. This group was working on Linux. They are second-year students in a two-year course.
The third class was in the Graphic Design department. This instructor was showing us examples of portfolios that her students have made, which the students will bring to job interviews. While the previous classes were made up of nearly all men, half of this class was women. Like in the other classes, all students appeared to be young - in their late teens or early twenties.

This instructor said that she teaches four classes per term.
The next class is comprised of first-year students, who were doing presentations in their Animations class.
We did see one lecture class, on the history of pop animation in Japan. The instructor was using PowerPoint, and students were taking notes on a handout.
The last class we visited was in games design, a third-year course. The students were working in groups to make a contest entry for the Tokyo Games Show. They were quite engaged in the project - this picture was taken well after the class ended and everyone was still there!

I asked the instructor how he grades the group project, and he noted that everyone gets the same grade.
The last stop was a motion capture lab, which students can sign up to use. This instructor was demonstrating a sword fight, which was a lot of fun to see.
We ended with a panel of JEC international students, who discussed student life at the college. One student noted that he takes 25 classes a term, which seems like an enormous amount of schoolwork!