(A)        Department History

   “Development of the cultural and creative industries” has not merely been a government policy of recent years, more significant is that it is a 21st Century trend. It is within that context that the application for a new department with Graduate School of Curriculum and Instruction (est. 2000) was approved by the Ministry of Education in 2010. On August 1, 2011, the Department of Learning and Materials Design was officially established by the university and merged with the Graduate School of Curriculum and Instruction.  

(B)        Our Aims

    Centered on culture and creativity, the department prepares professional workers for those industries with a special emphasis on proficiency in the design of learning and teaching materials, including print and digital materials used at various levels of education, spanning across the university and child/adolescent levels. Experts in this field tend to be inter-disciplinarians who incorporate the academic abilities of education, science, and art. Our department is divided along these very lines. Our education section focuses on curricula and education, and gives our students the content they need to become professionals in the industry; the science section brings in information technology; and the art section embraces aesthetic and design principles. Both the science and art sections are the tools of the program which students will later use alongside the content of the education section. This combination of tools and content, materials design with curricula and education, is the central ethos of the department. It uses the tools of art design and IT to produce creative work from a solid foundation in curriculum and instruction.

(C)           Educational Vision and Goals

1.   Undergraduate

(A)        To train researchers and compilers experienced in learning and materials design.

(B)        To develop operational and management skills in the educational technology and education/culture industries.

(C)        To train service leaders for the fields of self-motivated study and educational reform.

(D)        To train materials creators in the fields of urban trends and adaptive study.

2.   Graduate

(A)        To train educators and leaders for the curriculum and instruction fields.

(B)        To train researchers for active work in the curriculum and instruction fields; raise academic standards for research in those fields.

(C)        To promote awareness and practicable reform of the curriculum and instruction fields.

(D)        To promote international exchange within the curriculum and instruction fields; give exposure to research results and reform in Taiwan.