SKKU: Global·Innovation classes increase satisfaction and educational effectiveness

A student who took a class conducted by Jina Ro, a professor of Education at SKKU, last semester said, “I’m looking forward to class.”



Due to the COVID-19, all classes have been held online. It’s not possible to hold a face-to-face class yet SKKU increases educational effectiveness and students’ satisfaction by offering innovative courses.



SKKU will operate global and innovation classes in earnest starting from this year. Global and innovation classes are a new future-oriented university education model that SKKU presents in an environment where things change day by day due to technological innovation, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a decrease in the school-age population.



Global classes are conducted by connecting high-quality global educational content provided by prestigious overseas universities so that students can prepare for lessons in advance and professors can answer questions and elaborate on the content.



Innovation classes require students to consume more time on discussion, presentation, and teamwork rather than listening to lectures conducted by a professor. It is designed to allow students to acquire knowledge online on their own, and to apply knowledge alone after lectures through group activities in the class.



3 Types: Flip learning, Problem Solving, Specialized Innovation



Innovation classes consist of three types: flip learning, problem solving, and specialized innovation. Professors can freely use any teaching method beyond the existing teaching framework to conduct classes in a unique and innovative way.



One-way teaching method, which has been held at domestic universities, have not properly reflected the rapidly changing trend of academics. Since most of the class hours are filled only with lectures, there was a disadvantage that students had to visit the professor separately after class hours if they had questions.



SKKU’s global and innovation classes are differentiated from traditional classes in that they return class time entirely to educational consumers, students. Since the educational content of prestigious overseas universities is shared, professors will be able to receive much more questions from students in class as the burden of producing class materials themselves is eased.



It was found that the satisfaction of students who took global and innovative classes, which were piloted last semester, was very high. As students had more time to ask questions in class, they could easily ask questions and receive answers from professors directly. Especially, global classes are based on prestigious overseas universities taught in English, students said that they improved their English skills as well as felt like they were studying with international students, and their motivation for learning has grown.



Professors who conducted classes had high satisfaction as well. Since students learn basic concepts and key theories online in advance and attend class, providing in-depth lectures is possible. Additionally, the common opinion of professors who conducted global and innovation classes last semester is that the educational effect increases easily because students get extra explanations according to the students’ understanding through additional lectures, if necessary.

Professor Eunseok Lee, who conducted a computing engineering lecture last semester, said, “Compared to the lectures conducted by the existing method, the average score of students’ test scores increased.”



SKKU is applying absolute evaluation to foster talents with collaborative and problem-solving skills through global and innovation classes. The relative evaluation method that compares students’ GPA to others is not a proper way for students to develop the communication and convergence capabilities required by the future society.



Continuous expansion of the ratio of global and innovation classes



SKKU plans to continue to expand the ratio of global and innovation classes, which are currently about 10% of all classes, to complete SKKU’s global education platform. To this end, it will establish a “global content library” that allows professors to easily access and utilize educational content that can be used for lectures such as Coursera, edX, Future Learn, etc.



Joonmo Cho, an Executive Vice President of HSSC and Vice President of Academic Affairs, said, “Last semester, 154 global and innovation classes were conducted as a pilot operation. This year, we plan to further expand the global and innovation classes so that it can be a representative class model.”



Meanwhile, SKKU made headlines in May 2021 as it recruited UCLA Professor Jared Diamond, the bestseller author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. Professor Diamond took undergraduate classes last semester and gave lectures on problems and solutions facing humanity in the future under the theme of “The Age of Upheaval”. On the 1st Sungkyun International Conference held on last 14th, Professor Diamond had a discussion with Harvard professor Steven Pinker, a well-known author of “Better Angles of Our Nature”.