Ewha to offer customized education
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Students attend a digital media-related class at the Ewha Womans University campus in Seoul. / Courtesy of Ewha Womans University
Suh Hyuk, vice president for faculty and academic affairs at Ewha Womans University
By Chung Hyun-chae
Suh Hyuk, vice president for faculty and academic affairs at Ewha Womans University, said the university will provide customized education to meet the growing demand for diverse courses.
He said the university plans to launch a tailored program so that students will have more freedom in selecting courses, enabling them to gain more hands-on experience, and hone their global competitiveness.
The program is named the TELOS Track system. TELOS is an acronym for Truth, ECo, Lead, Open and Self-design. The TELOS Track offers five different roadmaps for each major.
The T track focuses on academic studies while the E track highlights practical learning that encourages students to learn about their subjects hands-on, the L track enhances the global competitiveness of the students, and the O track allows students to enroll in courses in other majors. The S track, called the Student-Designed Track, is the most innovative of the five tracks, allowing students the freedom to choose their majors and decide what they want to learn.
Ewha is making a test-run of the new system this fall semester and will fully introduce it in the spring semester of 2016. Students can choose which tracks they want to follow in their second year at Ewha.
“We are creating the TELOS Track system, so that it can be applied to all majors and live up to the students’ increasing demands for diverse courses,” Suh told The Korea Times during a recent interview.
The track names could vary in different majors. For example, there are the Culture and Translation (CT) track and the Storytelling and Technology (ST) track in English Literature. The idea of more than one track for the TELOS Track system is embodied in these two tracks.
“The students who opt for the ST track can take technology courses, gaining expertise in culture technology, and can apply what they learn there to literature,” Suh said. “If a student doesn’t want to follow either track, she can take the Student-Designed Track, where she can map out the courses she wants to take.”
According to Suh, the Student-Designed Track is different from the double major, minor and free major tracks because students can design their courses of study based solely on their interests.
“Even though those three majors were established to allow students much leeway in choosing majors, students still have to follow the fixed curriculum,” Suh said. “The TELOS Track is more like customer-tailored education in that it gives students free rein to explore their potential.”
According to Suh, the idea of the TELOS Track came from a student whose dream was to become a journalist specializing in Russian arts. As her major was international affairs, she visited her academic advisor to seek ways to take courses about Russian arts.
After meeting with the student, the professor shared the concept of the self-designed major with the university leadership and the university decided to launch this track.
“Given that it is the first time for a university in Korea to let students design their own majors, we could go through much trial and error to evolve the system,” Suh said.
In order to help students to systematically organize their own courses, academic supervisors examine their plans and advise them.
“I expect that the TELOS Track will enable students to gain a clear sense of their educational purposes,” Suh said.
Those who successfully complete the Student-Designed Track will receive a certificate in addition to their diplomas.
Ewha Challenge Semester
Ewha also plans to introduce another new system to provide more custom-tailored education, the Ewha Challenge Semester.
“As we think that it might not be productive for those having clear goals and plans to take the same courses that other students take, we decided to give them greater autonomy to achieve their goals,” Suh said.
During the Ewha Challenge Semester, students can take online courses for nine credits and perform other activities such as an internship or a study abroad program for the remaining nine credits.
The university will grant about 4 million won to each student for their own activities.
This year, the university plans to select 30 students to take the Challenge Semester.
“Participants will be selected through strict criteria and they must show the outcomes at the end of the semester,” Suh said. “We are thinking of matching one professor to one student to provide thorough management.”
For these student-centered education programs, Ewha Womans University has been selected as one of 16 universities of the Advancement of College Education (ACE) project the Ministry of Education has pushed forward since 2010 with the aim of strengthening the competitiveness of universities in Korea.
The university will receive about 9 billion won ($7.9 million) in state aid for the programs for four years until 2018.
“We also have recently established the concept of talent, ‘THE Talent,’ along with diverse projects,” Suh said.
THE is an acronym for Telos, Hokma and Experience. Telos is a Greek word that means purpose and Hokma is Hebrew word meaning wisdom.
“We want our students to become wise enough to lead the world by developing the future,” Suh added.