US-Japan collaboration on engineering education reform and evaluation

A collaboration between engineering educators in the US and Japan has been launched, focused on sharing information and strategies on the process of reform in the two countries. From the US side, most of the participants are active players in the NSF-sponsored Engineering Education Coalitions; from the Japan side, participants include faculty from both national universities and private universities, and representatives of government. The collaboration was initiated in July, 1995 with a bi-national workshop held at Semi-ah-moo, Washington. The second working meeting took place in November, 1995 in Osaka. Because of its central role in the process of change, evaluation methodologies have been a major focus of our effort, spanning evaluation of student learning, evaluation of teaching, and evaluation of reform at the institutional level. At our second working meeting in Osaka, several bi-national working groups were formed.