教育與推廣

The professional specimen making workshop is organized for staff at natural history museums, museum staff in other fields than natural history, and people who are interested in biological specimens. The course program includes techniques for making different types of biological specimens, such as insects, invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants. The students acquire knowledge and skills in specimen making through lectures and hands-on experience. Our experience in running this course has been presented in international conferences. Furthermore, the products of course have become materials for a research and development project aiming to introduce the contents developed in this workshop into the formal curriculum in high schools.

University museums exist to assist academic research and instruction in higher education. Moreover, they also serve as the bridge that connects the university and society with the purpose of promoting education. Through the interpretation of knowledge and museum technology that provides observation and experience, museum education enables museums to communicate with different types of people. This is also one of the skills that the college students will find useful in their future career development. Therefore, NTU Museums offer training courses for communicating professional knowledge in order to develop human resources in different museum professions.

Through the exchange visits between the Kyoto University Museum and NTU Museums in 2013, the staff of NTU Museums following the template of Children’s Museum activities in Kyoto University Museum to develop its own program. Since 2014, a continuing series of Children’s Museum activities targeting elementary-school students has been organized during the weekends. NTU students in the service learning course are responsible for design the activities. In the training course, they design, review, and revise the lesson plans. These lesson plans were then implemented to teach the participating children. NTU students can exercise their ability to transmit knowledge through this process.