Examination of Incorporating Elements of Career Education and Financial Education in Engineering Courses to Encourage Continuous Introspection
2023-09-13, 09:40– (Asia/Tokyo), Training Room 1

In order for students to live a socially independent life after graduation and start a life of financial comfort, they should acquire financial literacy while they are still in school and use their own motivation, money and time to invest in themselves. The KOSEN has many opportunities to demonstrate the achievements of their self-investment, such as robot contests. However, many students who do not voluntarily experience such oppotunities tend to lose their awareness of the significance of learning because they are desperate to complete immediate assignments and exams. Therefore, in this research, we discussed a method of incorporating elements of career education and financial education in specialized subjects for the purpose of students' continuous introspection and raising awareness of self-investment. In addition, we made a prototype of teaching materials to be applied to electrical subjects in the lower grades, and examined its validity.
 In order for students to continuously introspect on themselves, it is necessary first of all to give them a clear reason for studying at school, and self-analysis is effective in this practice. Furthermore, in order to enable them to live a rich life without worrying about money, after giving concrete lectures on general matters of financial planning during their studies and after graduation, students are asked to describe their own life and career policies. While providing them the knowledge and opportunity to reflect on such continuous introspection, students take specialized subjects that incorporate the financial literacy that forms the basis of financial planning. Career and financial literacy encourage students' independence and motivation to study specialized subjects every time they interact with money in their daily lives.
 Motivation for learning, career and financial literacy cannot be obtained overnight, so this initiative will not be a one-time class, but will continue to overlap. As an example of a specialized subject class that incorporates elements of career education and financial education, we made a prototype of a photovoltaic power generation investment teaching material for second-year students' electromagnetism. Compared to ordinary classroom lectures, 50% of the students who took classes using this teaching material gave positive evaluations, and 13% of them were negative. In order to increase the number of positive evaluations, it is necessary to improve the class further, such as adjusting the difficulty level.


In this research, we discussed the method of incorporating elements of career education and financial education in specialized subjects for the purpose of students' continuous self-reflection and raising awareness of self-investment. In addition, we made a prototype of teaching materials to be applied to electrical subjects in the lower grades, and examined its validity.


Keywords

Career education, Financial education in engineering courses, Self-investment

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