October 22, 2022, Beijing, China Science and Technology Museum, Robot AI Intelligent Scene Demonstration. (Visual China/Photo)
(For details, see "The Dean's Detailed Explanation of Future Technical Colleges of 12 Universities: Breakthrough of New Engineering")
How should a university teacher teach students the technology that does not exist at the moment? In the past year or so, many universities have given different answers.
On May 20, 2021, the Ministry of Education announced the first batch of Future Technical Colleges list, and 12 universities including Peking University , Tsinghua University , Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics were selected. The goal of the first batch of colleges is to "target cutting-edge, revolutionary and disruptive technologies in the next 10 to 15 years." As of now, most universities have established relevant colleges, and some colleges have also recruited the first undergraduate students.
According to Southern Weekend reporters, the path to the establishment of the future technical college is often reorganized through interdisciplinary methods based on the original Academy of Engineering, which brings many challenges to the research and teaching of the college. After the establishment of the new college, how should the research direction be adjusted? Peking University Future Technology School Deputy Dean Liu Ying admitted that when the team was first formed, there were scholars from different research directions, and they all went through a period of running-in.
A physical college that combines scientific research and teaching is particularly critical to lead students on the road of exploration. "The teacher feedbacks to the college that the research results generated by students through project courses have been submitted to the SCI journal , and some students' scientific research results in the first semester of their freshman year have reached the level of graduate students." said Wang Xiaohua, executive dean of the School of Future Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University.
What kind of physical institution is the Future Technical College? In the practice of the past year, how the college has explored a training path that combines education, science and technology and talents. Focusing on related issues, Southern Weekend reporters conducted exclusive interviews with Liu Ying and Wang Xiaohua.
The intersection of disciplines is a breakthrough point
Southern Weekend: Future technology can be understood as a technology that has not appeared yet. For something that does not exist yet, how can the college plan its research direction before the establishment of the college?
Wang Xiaohua: Future technology is not "grown" by a certain discipline, it should be produced by the deep intersection and integration of multiple disciplines. Our college’s research directions focus on energy storage science and engineering, intersection of medicine and industry, artificial intelligence and intelligent manufacturing, which are all cross-disciplinary directions. For example, we mainly conduct cross-border technology innovation and research and development of medical devices based on physical elements such as sound, light, electricity, magnetism, and nuclear.
Liu Ying: The future technology must be cutting-edge, revolutionary and subversive, and it must also be combined with the school's discipline advantages and development layout. For more than ten years, Peking University 's Life Sciences has carried out close academic exchanges and cross-cooperation with various disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry, physics, and psychology. Therefore, there is a good interdisciplinary soil for the direction of biomedicine and life sciences. In this direction, innovative breakthroughs may be more likely to be made. Therefore, the school finally chose life and health as the discipline direction of the future technical college.
Southern Weekend: You mentioned that future technology will be disruptive and revolutionary, so how do you judge that a certain research direction has these characteristics?
Liu Ying: This requires sufficient academic accumulation and academic vision to predict the development trend of science and technology. Discipline crossing may be a breakthrough point. For example, in recent years, many breakthroughs have been made in the research of big data and artificial intelligence. Can these technologies be applied to the fields of biomedicine, life and health, and bring about revolutionary breakthroughs? But the experience and laws of scientific development also tell us that the emergence of disruptive technologies often comes from breakthroughs in basic research, so we must encourage various fields to explore extensively from basic research in order to find better innovation points.
Southern Weekend: Is this intersectionality reflected in the current operations of the college?
Liu Ying: Our college has a fixed PI association (Principal Investigator, meaning the project leader/main researcher).The speakers of the meeting were selected from teachers from different research directions of the college and shared 2 to 3 reports each time. On the one hand, we hope to promote understanding between different laboratories in the hospital through regular exchanges and learn from each family’s strengths. On the other hand, we hope to promote cooperation between different laboratories and majors through exchanges with teachers and students from other academic backgrounds. In addition, we are also preparing to build an academic exchange platform for graduate students this year, allowing them to exchange and discuss difficulties and achievements in the scientific research process, and promote scientific research cooperation between students and laboratories.
High-intensity learning mode
Southern Weekend: Most future technical colleges are composed of the majors of several original colleges, but Xi'an Jiaotong University 's future technical colleges are slightly different in composition?
Wang Xiaohua: Our major and college are brand new. From the perspective of the establishment method, our college is neither composed of several original colleges nor derived from a certain college. Future technical colleges derived from the "college-run major" model may be difficult to break the boundaries of the original major in terms of system and mechanism, and may also be difficult to achieve "discipline intersection".
In addition, we are adopting the "cross-border majors", which not only achieves cross-border majors, but also emphasizes more on school-enterprise cooperation and industry-education integration . Future Technology College has more than 40,000 square meters of physical space, providing school teachers, corporate tutors and students with a place and innovation experimental platform for jointly carrying out technology innovation activities.
Southern Weekend: What is the current admission method for ?
Wang Xiaohua: We select students after entering the school. If we are selected, we will be the training of undergraduate, master and doctoral students. The college will select students in all majors except liberal arts in the school, and will select students through written examinations, comprehensive interviews and project practice assessments. There is also an elimination mechanism. Although failing the subject is not the only basis for elimination, if the student’s final assessment results are not satisfactory and he cannot adapt to our teaching philosophy and teaching model, he may be eliminated. Some students may not fail the subject, but the assessment found that their innovation ability did not meet the requirements of the college and were not very adapted to this high-intensity learning model. We may also eliminate him.
Liu Ying: Undergraduate enrollment consists of two parts. First, the Department of Biomedical Engineering of the School of Technology has been incorporated into the School of Future Technology, which has about 10 enrollment quotas per year. Although their academic status is included in the School of Technology, it is directly trained by the School of Future Technology. The college is now applying to the school, hoping that we will be independent starting next year. Second, for undergraduate students in the first and second grades of science and engineering, if they are willing to register for the Future Technical College through the second enrollment form, we can also accept appropriate students through the assessment.
Southern Weekend: After enrollment, how was the training model of the college designed?
Wang Xiaohua: uses a project discussion-based teaching organization method at the level of "teaching". At present, we have introduced the chief teacher of the Sixth Academy of Aerospace and the chief scientist of Huawei into the classroom. Among the 29 newly created courses in the college, in addition to English, school teachers and corporate experts jointly formulate the teaching content and teach them. In addition to the school tutor team and corporate tutors, the college also equips students with entrepreneurial intentions with venture capital tutors.
At the level of "learning", during the learning process, knowledge fragmentation will cause cognitive overload, cognitive bias and learning trekking. In October this year, the school launched the "Construction of a Collection Learning Platform Based on Knowledge Graph". The knowledge graph is a graph that shows the relationship between the process of knowledge development and structure. The platform will support students to carry out collectible learning, build a knowledge graph of courses and project tasks, record various learning behavior data of students, and form students' learning portraits. Related projects will be piloted first in the college.
At the "management" level, our evaluation of students does not only look at the test scores, but also conducts a comprehensive evaluation of them. The evaluation system includes students' project results, students' performance in the scientific research process, and the final exam.
Liu Ying: College attaches great importance to students' ideological and political courses and courses. First, it hopes that the innovative talents they cultivate will have a high sense of mission to serve the major national strategies. Second, it allows students to establish a scientific spirit of pursuing truth and cannot act without the integrity of scientific research because of their eagerness for quick success and instant benefits.
In terms of knowledge, in addition to the basic knowledge in the field of life and health, it also pays great attention to the cultivation of interdisciplinary thinking and abilities. Teachers from different colleges and disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry, and physics have been invited to teach. In addition to the admissions of undergraduate and master's degree, this year we have opened a doctorate degree in biomedicine, mainly for talent recruitment at the executive level of pharmaceutical companies, hoping to strengthen exchanges between the academic and industry.
In terms of capabilities, we hope to rely on the major scientific research projects and transformation research bases built by the college to explore dynamic teaching organization forms. For example, the multimodal cross-scale biomedical imaging facility that was just completed in Huairou Science City will also become our training base. As a super research tool, this facility will reveal the mystery of life from multiple levels of micro, mesoscopic, and macro.
values leadership training
Southern Weekend: It has been more than a year since the list was announced to the present. How do you understand the significance of the establishment of the Technical College in the future?
Liu Ying: I think it can be described as "pioneer". The Future Technical College will explore cutting-edge science and technology, and it is also exploring a new educational model, that is, how we should cultivate leading talents in future science and technology in the future. If the innovative models of relevant colleges in various schools are proven to achieve good results, they will definitely lead to the transformation of research paradigms and innovative talent training models.
Southern Weekend: What should your ideal future technical college look like?
Wang Xiaohua: First, we must incubate new directions and develop cutting-edge, revolutionary and disruptive future technological directions; second, we must innovate new mechanisms, and through institutional and mechanism innovation, we can achieve effective connection between the industrial chain , innovation chain, talent chain and education chain; finally, we must create a new platform to create a new platform integrating talent training, scientific research, incubation of results, and innovation and entrepreneurship.
Southern Weekend: What other efforts do you need to do for this vision?
Wang Xiaohua: After this year of practice, our teachers can already know what the construction philosophy of the college is and can also practice it in specific teaching, but the ideal goal has not been achieved yet, and the quality of teaching needs to be improved.
In addition, it is necessary to strengthen organizational management in students' scientific research. In other words, we must face the important needs of the country, carry out organized scientific research through the deep integration of industry and education, and implement the R&D process of enterprises, such as what work should be completed and what results should be achieved at any time, and have a strict system. Through this organized scientific research, students can truly do cutting-edge research on the one hand, and on the other hand, they can receive joint guidance from teachers and corporate experts.
Liu Ying: Many of our graduate students have participated in the construction of large facilities projects, so we also hope that through this activity, we will continue to improve students' horizons and abilities. In addition, we will also invite scholars to conduct academic reports, part of which is related to life experience.
At present, I value the leadership training of students more, and I find that students are indeed lacking in this regard. It also includes skills in scientific research expression, such as how to better express effectively to the public and collaborators, how to communicate and perform. In the future, I am still considering whether to give students a relevant course.
Southern Weekend Reporter Su Youpeng Southern Weekend Intern Yuan Zhilan
