UoA graduate students proposed new services for Hakodate city tram, Hokkaido through development of an application program

Graduate students from the University of Aizu, Future University Hakodate, Doshisha University and Muroran Institute of Technology participated in the workshop, "Business Service Design" (*1) to propose new services for Hakodate city tram for 5 days from Monday, August 11, 2014. The objective of this workshop is to help students acquire an ability to solve problems while working together and communicating with each other. Such team-based work through PBL (*2) is needed in real world.

The students exchanged ideas for new services from users' viewpoints while going around the city by tram and asking questions to the tram staff and tourists. At the end of the workshop, each team proposed new services of the tram using a diorama, and gave a presentation.

Exchanging ideas on the tram (Left), Observing inside of the tram (Right)

Katsuki YANAI (UoA Master's 1st-Year) said, "I found it important to visualize what I actually saw in field work and explain about it to people. It was really a good experience of describing the ideas using the diorama made through discussions with my team members from other universities. I wish to make use of this experience for my future development tasks." On the final day of this workshop, "Facilitation Skills Lecture" (*3) was held, at which the students learned skills to have meeting proceed smoothly and actively. And in the "Facilitator Seminar", they learned how to organize groups fairly as a leader.

Presentation by team (Left), Proposing new services with a diorama (Right)

The students went back to their universities on August 18. After that, they remotely attended "Basic Seminar for Development of Business Applications" and learned how to design development environments and process, and worked on application development through mini PBL with their team members. Remotely communicating with the team members, they made full use of the remote tools and worked on development tasks in a short period of one week for development.

The students developed creative and practical applications such as "Ai-Hako", with which tourists can get sightseeing information in a quiz style connecting Hakodate and Aizu, both of which are related to Jo NIIJIMA and his wife Yae (*4), and "GIVE ME OSAGARI" for people to buy and sell used textbooks in a reverse auction style.

"The PBL-based Development Seminar" will start as "distributed PBL" this October. In this seminar, students will develop systems in a remote PBL style, using development methods such as Iterative Development and Agile Software Development.

To nurture creative specialists with an ability to find and solve problems, the University of Aizu is providing opportunities for development of various and practical software, as well as an environment for team projects. Graduate students are eligible to take this seminar and get the credits. The seminar will be open next year as well.

Aizu-Hakodate quiz application "Ai-Hako" (Left) ,Reverse auction application "GIVE ME OSAGARI" (Right)

*1　"Business Service Design": A short-term training program to propose new services of Hakodate city tram:

Related links (Japanese) :
Educational Network for Practical Information Technologies
Future University Hakodate, Practical Human Development Program (enPiT FUN) Facebook

*2　PBL:

PBL (Project Based Learning) is an educational approach in which problems and cases are provided, and people work to solve these problems on a team.

*3　Facilitation Skills:

In organizational settings such as conferences and meetings, they refer to skills to enable organizations and participants to work cooperatively by encouraging statements and participation, coordinating the running a meeting and supporting mutual understanding of participants. A person who takes on such a role by not taking sides is called "facilitator".

*4　Hakodate and Aizu: Places related to Jo and Yae NIIJIMA:

Yae NIIJIMA (1845-1932), the main female character of "Yae's Sakura", Taiga Drama 2013, was born into Aizu Domain (current Aizuwakamatsu City). She was a daughter of a master of gunnery. Her husband, Jo NIIJIMA (aka:Joseph Hardy Neesima, 1843-1890) went to the United States from Hakodate to enhance his knowledge when he was 21 years old.
Related link: UoA involved in the making of "Yae's sakura"