Short-term exchange programs for engineering research education

This paper discusses strategies to deepen the learning outcomes of short-term exchange programs for engineering research education. Experiences of real research environments are invaluable aid to foster engineering major students. These students often participate such research educations not only at their attending universities but also at other institutes in foreign countries. The latter programs are widely provided as “Summer courses” all over the world. This paper examines how such global student mobility can be enhanced by focusing on the demands and needs from every stakeholder, particularly the participating students and the host universities. This paper finds, based on the survey data from an example short-term exchange program in action, that the key aspects of the enhancing strategies include: appropriate assignment of research group and topics, effective and sincere guidance through the research activities, suitable setting of motivating target at an early stage of the program, and sufficient life support for the participants.