The Ministry of Education is to introduce semiconductor courses into high-school curricula, with five pilot courses to be selected this year, a professor who is helping implement the program said yesterday.
The ministry has invited teachers who have taught semiconductor-related courses at the high-school level to help it develop a curriculum that will be used for the program.
One aim of the program would be to increase the interest of high-school students in choosing STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programs at university, National Taiwan Normal University Affiliated Senior High School teacher Hung Yi-wen (洪逸文) said.
Photo courtesy of Hung Yi-wen
The program is to focus on six areas: electrical science, semiconductor principles, the semiconductor manufacturing process, applications of semiconductors in daily life, circuit design and social issues related to the semiconductor industry, he said.
“Current courses on semiconductors are mostly developed by university professors, so the content might be too difficult for high-school students,” he said.
Teachers who have field experience in semiconductors would help design course content that is more appropriate for high-school students, he said.
The semiconductor industry encompasses three main areas — integrated circuit design, manufacturing, and packaging and testing, Hung said, adding that Taiwan accounts for the majority of these processes worldwide.
Taiwan has achieved its dominance in the industry through a semiconductor ecosystem in which industry-leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) works with other Taiwanese companies to form a supply chain.
“Course structure and content for this program will all be designed flexibly, and can be adjusted according to the characteristics of students and teaching needs,” he said.
Citing an example, Hung said the program could make use of six-week or 12-week “micro courses,” and that teachers could even use the material as supplementary material when teaching general subjects.
The program designers would record online teaching videos and students could study them independently, if they wished to do so, he said.
National Chi Nan University president Wuu Dong-sing (武東星) said that in the interest of cultivating talent for the semiconductor industry, interdisciplinary courses that promote inquiry into related subjects should be implemented at the primary and secondary-school levels.
This would help prepare students for interdisciplinary STEM subjects, such as digital systems and artificial intelligence, he said.
“The cultivation of cross-disciplinary talents is a new trend. We are also starting to see more female students who take electrical engineering as their second discipline,” National Taiwan Normal University professor Lin Kun-yi (林坤誼) said.
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