Professor is keynote speaker at Tokyo symposium

John M. Carroll, Edward M. Frymoyer chair of Information Sciences and Technology, was the keynote speaker at a recent national symposium held in Tokyo and sponsored by the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology and the Japanese Ministry of Education. The symposium drew Japanese academics and representatives from information technology corporations to discuss the future of computing education at the university level in Japan. Carroll, the only non-Japanese academic at the symposium, was invited for his expertise on human-computer interaction. The Japanese government is exploring ways to improve computer science education and is implementing some of the curricular elements in place at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) and other American i-schools. These include requiring internships for students to experience the workplace, pervasively using problem-based learning in classes and taking a more interdisciplinary approach to studying the applications and impacts of information technology on people, organizations and societies, Carroll said.