“Sports, Technology and Intelligent Life”, one of the first interdisciplinary innovative courses at the University, was acclaimed as a teaching case of major breakthroughs and included in Super Courses: The Future of Teaching and Learning published by Princeton University Press recently.
Accredited as one of the first batch of National First-class Courses, “Sports, Technology and Intelligent Life” focuses on sports experience and interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving. Based on task-oriented team practice, it unleashes the intrinsic motives of students to develop their interdisciplinary knowledge structures, thinking modes and calibres, and gives full play to their creativity and innovation competence. Up to date, a total of eight sessions have been delivered by an interdisciplinary teaching team including Song Ailing at the Department of Sports, Zhang Xueqin at the School of Electrical Engineering, Zhu Zhiwu at the School of Mechanics and Engineering, Du Run at the School of Mechanical Engineering and Jiang Yushi at the School of Economics and Management.
Super Courses: The Future of Teaching and Learning, a latest masterpiece written by Professor Ken Bain, a renowned American educator, contains 17 chapters covering major milestone teaching cases obtained from his field investigations of different colleges and universities in the United States, China and Singapore, including the world famous ones such as Harvard University, Olin College of Engineering, Northwestern University and Duke-NUS Medical School, etc. The course of “Sports, Technology and Intelligent Life” from our University is included in Chapter Ten of the book dedicated to the interdisciplinary learning.
During his two visits at Southwest Jiaotong University in 2015 and 2018, Professor Bain delivered influential reports at nearly 20 seminars for the faculty and students of the University, and was widely applauded for his strong support rendered to “the Students Growth and Development Oriented Education Reform” at the University. In the following years, he kept an eye on SWJTU’s curriculum development, and demonstrates in his new book the great achievements the University has made in interdisciplinary teaching reform.
