Education to Stimulate Students Motivation: Activity Through the Factory for Dreams and Ideas

Kanazawa Institute of Technology (hereinafter KIT) started its education reform in April 1995. The basic principle behind the reform is to develop students who can learn autonomously. The idea comes from education inadequacies up to that time, where instructors “crammed” knowledge into students. KIT established the “Factory for Dreams and Ideas” (hereinafter “Yumekobo” which is the original Japanese name of the facility), a facility open to all KIT students. There they can create things any time they like. The students can utilize “Yumekobo” freely, in the same manner as a library. In Japan, the national holidays and Sundays total sixty-five days in a year leaving three hundred days for potential use of “Yumekobo”. University classes are in session one hundred and fifty days. This means it is necessary for KIT professors and instructors to come up with good strategies to have the students spend the remaining one hundred days in a productive way that will help students to raise their academic performance. To facilitate increased performance, KIT built a library center in 1982. There, learning takes place mainly through reading books. However, we felt that another new facility to stimulate students’ interest in creating things would be an excellent way to motivate further learning for the students. Here the author will explain present state of “Yumekobo” and how it has helped students continually seek to implement their ideas, especially through team activities.