CURRICULUM AND IMPLEMENTATION OF KOSEN ENGINEERING EDUCATION AT KOSEN-KMITL, THAILAND

Japanese College of Technology (known as "KOSEN") for engineering education, starting at the age of 15, is Japan's original five years tertiary education school has played important roles in fostering innovative engineers in Japan in the last fifty years.  In May 2019, the first KOSEN in the Kingdom of Thailand, KOSEN-KMITL, was opened at King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL) under the mutual collaboration between Thailand and Japanese stakeholders to foster innovative future engineers as Thailand's industrial human resource development project.  The KOSEN-KMITL is established to provide engineering education as same as Japanese NIT's KOSEN and is operated by KOSEN-KMITL's Thai faculties and Japanese KOSEN experts.  In order to ensure educational equivalency between KOSEN-KMITL and Japanese NIT KOSEN, its curriculum is designed based on NIT's "Model Core Curriculum (MCC)" that covers learning contents with specific attainment target levels, students' professional and generic competencies, curriculum design policy, educational approaches, quality assurance measures, etc. as the minimum standard for NIT's KOSEN. In this paper, KOSEN engineering education starting at KOSEN-KMITL, including extracurricular activities and international collaboration, is reported.  It is shown that the KOSEN-KMITL curriculum well matches with the CDIO standard and syllabus. Since KOSEN-KMITL is a newly opened school in collaboration with 51 NIT's KOSEN colleges, many educational challenges are being implemented. The details of the comparison result with a subject mapping based on educational outcomes and the progress of KOSEN education in Thailand are presented.