On 30 March, the Ministry of Education held the "Exceptional Decade - Giving Back to Society" achievement presentation conference series. The theme for this session was "Teaching Innovations", where the National Taiwan University (NTU) and other top universities presented achievements in teaching innovations as part of the “Aim for the Top University Project”. Apart from the contributions of cutting-edge teaching theories and practical research by the leading Universities, outstanding achievements through practical utilization of multimedia interactive teaching medium and the development of innovative courses were also presented.

Electrical engineering professor Ping-Cheng (Benson) Yeh of NTU, a long-term advocate of teaching innovation as well as the world champion of the first teaching innovation competition "Reimagining Education" co-organized by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and QS World University Rankings, will also be sharing his personal experience and examples in teaching innovation.

The Ministry of Education launched the "Aim for the Top University Project" in 2006. Resources are allocated every year to the universities for improving teaching and research quality. Today, the project is entering its tenth year. Under the proactive promotion by the funded schools, there have been significant results in the fields of teaching, research, industry cooperation, and internationalization. In 2014, various indicators have met the desired standards; these indicators include: "number of researchers and full-time teaching staff recruited from overseas", "ratio of enrollment quota of full-time new undergraduate students through the Stars Project recommendation over annual school enrolment rate through other channels", "number of established programs taught in English only", "number of full-time teaching staff who are also members of major local and international academic associations", "growth rate of the number of highly-cited papers (HiCi) in the last 10 years", "growth rate of grants provided by non-governmental departments for industry cooperation", "international students in full study programs or exchange programs", "staff and students participating in short-term research, exchange, or for joint degree purposes at overseas universities and research institutions".

In view of the crucial responsibility to nurture talents by the leading Universities, each school places great emphasis reforming every aspect of teaching. From general education reform, inter-disciplinary courses established to respond to industry demand for cross-disciplinary talents, proactive recruitment of first-rate international research talents, to improving the campus infrastructure to create an accessible environment. Furthermore, the universities receiving grants have also proactively improved the learning environment. They have promoted learning through various learning support measures in order to enhance the overall learning efficacy of students.

Apart from the teaching team led by Prof. Yeh Ping-Cheng which had already received international recognition, the course "Normal Physics" run by Professor Lin Hsiu-Hau of National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) Department of Physics had also received an Outstanding Course Award from the global open course network OpenCourseWare Consortium. The above relevant examples demonstrate the attempts by Taiwan's Chinese programs to pioneer a strong visibility on the global stage. In addition, the transformative examples brought about by Taiwan's leading Universities in their classrooms have served as exemplars to influence elementary and secondary schools. This has fulfilled the social responsibilities of these leading Universities as well as generated endless possibilities for teaching innovation in Taiwan's overall education system.

This teaching innovation achievement presentation is organized by NTU. The focus is on the open courses and digital learning of each university. It is co-hosted by National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) and National Chiao Tung University (NCTU). With the funding support provided for the "Aim for the Top University Project", each university is dedicated to promoting reforms of teaching methods. They are also utilizing digital technology to improve learning and have led Taiwan's tertiary education into the new era of digital learning. It can be seen from the achievements under the various programs of the universities, that these institutions are dedicated to developing open courses. Currently there are a total of 1100 open courses on offer from 20 universities including NTU, NTHU and NCKU (National Cheng Kung University). The number of course participants has reached 18 million in total. Participants range from university students to professionals from all around the world.

There has been continuous reform on teaching methods from major universities around Taiwan in the past decade. Teaching has been transformed into three stages from "Open CourseWare" (OCW), to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and then further into transformative classrooms where digital technology is utilized comprehensively. The focus of teaching has been shifted from instruction by teachers to student learning. It also attracts the community to join the ranks of learning thus enabling the universities to do their part in contributing to society. A total of 17 public and private universities have sent representatives to take part in the first "Aim for the Top University Project" achievement presentation conference.

Source: http://news.sina.com.tw/article/20150330/14087704.html