Chung Yuan Christian University’s off-campus learning program helps students learn lessons that would not normally be covered in classrooms, professor Chang Tao-pen said.
The program has been available for 13 years, helping students gain professional skills, allowing them to experience society, and helping students and faculty shoulder social responsibility and strive to embrace the tenets of holistic education, Chang said.
The university in Taoyuan said that it has always sought to offer courses that would allow students to “learn by doing” and this year has arranged projects with off-campus nonprofit groups.
Nudging students outside their comfort zone and allowing them to apply what they have learned helps broaden their learning experience, the university said.
One of the projects has been with the Taoyuan City Government promoting animal protection, it said.
Students created short videos that compared the value of animal life with how people live and made digital maps of establishments in Taoyuan that are pet-friendly, it said.
Chang Hao , a student in the department of commercial design, said that the videos aimed to help people contemplate whether “life should have a price tag” and encourage support for adopting pets instead of buying them.
Another project was to broaden knowledge about the Republic of China Air Force’s former Black Cat Squadron.
Products were designed after extensive interviews with people who lived near the squadron’s base in Dayuan District , department of electronic engineering student Huang Yu-ting said.
“We hope to add to the community’s cultural identity with designs and events that pass on the history of the former air base and the squadron it used to house,” Huang said.
Black Cat was the code name for the air force’s 35th Squadron, which worked with the CIA during the Cold War on nighttime reconnaissance missions deep into Chinese airspace, usually with U-2 planes.
A third project, conducted with Christian organization Step 30’s Living Water Projects, creating short animated videos featuring Taiwanese and African children practicing water conservation, the university said.
