Over the past two decades, my educational activities have focused on transdisciplinary learning and the role of design in connecting different fields. At Kyoto University, this approach shaped the curricula of both the Department of Social Informatics, established in 1998, and the Kyoto University Design School, launched in 2013. In both programs, design served as a common language through which students and faculty from different academic backgrounds could work together.
After retiring from Kyoto University, I moved to Waseda University in 2019, where I worked on the design of the required workshop series Social and Human Innovation by Practical Science and Engineering (SHIP) for a newly established international program. More recently, my educational activities have expanded to the use of Large Language Models in university learning, leading to the development of AI Fluency: Self-Regulated Learning with LLMs.
Social Informatics
The Department of Social Informatics at Kyoto University was established to bring together students from widely different backgrounds, including information science, engineering, business, and medicine. Its curriculum used design, analysis, and policy as a common foundation, linking the design of social information systems with empirical analysis and feedback to policy and science and technology.
Design School
The Kyoto University Design School was launched in 2013 as an interdisciplinary five-year doctoral program. It treated design as a lingua franca connecting informatics, mechanical engineering, architecture, management, and psychology, with the aim of educating people capable of working across disciplines to address complex social problems.
AI Fluency
My recent educational activities focus on how students can learn with Large Language Models without surrendering their own judgment. This work has led to AI Fluency: Self-Regulated Learning with LLMs, an open coursebook that develops metacognitive skills through the progression UNDERSTAND → QUERY → SOLVE. The course combines lectures, hands-on exercises, and reflection, and the materials are designed for adaptation and reuse in different educational settings.
