IPBL teaching assistant in Osaka Institute of Technology, Japan
By Tsai, Wen-Kai - September 01, 2019
IPBL stands for International Practitioner-Based Learning. There was a chance for students in our department to had academical exchange with students in OIA(Osaka Institute of Technology), and I was honored to be selected as a TA by the professor.
Objection:
Our goal was to made a mini version of wind turbine and tested its efficiency in generating electricity. The purpose was to let students had a deeper understanding in Fluid Mechanics and how the design of the blades could affect its efficiency. But most importantly, students had to conquer the barrier in language to communicate with each other to reach the goal.
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| the wind turbines made by students from scratch |
My job was to teach them how to draw and design their blades in CREO (3D modeling software) as well as the ability to simulate the efficiency using QBlade (a software specifically designed for blade test).
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| me being a TA teaching 3D modeling software |
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| students trying to communicate with each other while our TA assisting with the technical problem |
What this event had brought to me?
I actually had participated this event twice. The first time I was one of the students struggling to build a wind turbine, and the second time I became a TA. But no matter what role I was playing in this academical exchange, communicated with foreigners was not as easy as just making friends with them: one could not just sit there and smile until others finished their speaking without understanding a word they had said. It was about how one articulated the idea to others with different culture background and mother language. Scratching or word-by-word translation would do, but the worst thing one could do was to avoid connections with others.
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