VISIT TO LUNGHWA UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY WITH JUAA AND ONESQA

2018-03-30

Taiwan Assessment and Evaluation Association (TWAEA) firstly started the “International Staff Exchange Program" in 2018 together with Japan University Accreditation Association (JUAA) and the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment of Thailand (ONESQA). On 23rd of March, a site-visit to Lunghwa University of Science and Technology (LHU) was arranged to allow them learn more about the characteristics of Taiwan’s technological and vocational education.

During the meeting with representatives from JUAA and ONESQA, President Tzu-Hsiang Ko from LHU pointed out that the school does not aim at cultivating Nobel Prize winners, but adhere to the practical characteristics to cultivate the talents that meet both the needs of the enterprise and society; Vice President Ru-Jen Lin further mentioned that the school promotes the improvement of the quality through the implementations of internal and external evaluations, so that the results can be seen all over the world. In 2015, the institution was already recognized by Ministry of Education as one of the institutions that can conduct evaluation by themselves; therefore, the internal quality assurance mechanism was then established for sustainable improvement to strengthen the quality of teaching and courses. The performance result could be seen from one of the surveys that students' satisfaction to the teaching reached 4.5. The institution states that the implementation of internal quality assurance not only reflected on students’ performance, but also shown in the acquisition of external competitive funding. The school has received the award of Ministry of Education's Teaching Excellence Program for 12 consecutive years (2006-2017), and in 2018, the institution received a subsidy of NTD 104.41 million from the Higher Education Sprout Project.

In order to let the representatives from JUAA and ONESQA experience more of practical use of what students have learned from school, a number of unique places on the campus were arranged for visiting with teachers and students’ guidance. The first stop was the school's cradle for creativity and inventions, the "Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center", which demonstrates the results of R&D, technology transfer and commercialization of teachers and students’ efforts, of which 40 patents were achieved in 2017, with the amount of 16.76 million of technology transfer. Then, MAC Multimedia Laboratory from Department of Multimedia and Game Science, Language Center, Professional Certification Center, and Surface Mounting Technology Laboratory and Creative Molding Center from Department of Electronic Engineering were arranged later on. Department of Tourism also arranged on-site demonstrations for bartenders and sommeliers. Visitors from JUAA and ONESQA can understand the actual practices for students and experience the innovative and pragmatic performance of the institution.

Representatives from JUAA and ONESQA not only benefited a lot from the half-day visit, but also impressed with how our technological and vocational institutions value the students’ practical abilities. They’ve learned that our technological and vocational institutions have worked closely with industries. Moreover, they were also impressed with LHU’s efforts in providing students with the capabilities and opportunities for being successfully employed. Through this visit, Japan and Thailand's evaluation agencies can better understand the current status of our education quality and the control mechanism, which will be beneficial to future promotion on quality assurance systems. TWAEA always pays lots of attentions on International cooperation; in addition to build the bridge between international evaluation agencies and colleges and universities, this visit also deepen their understanding towards our vocational education quality. TWAEA looks forward to building deeper and wider exchanges with international evaluation organizations, and further assisting Taiwan's technological and vocational education to gradually open up international visibility and make our higher education more internationalized.