KOTO-TSUKURI

Ian Frank

Professor, Future University Hakodate
PhD. Edinburgh University (Artifical Intelligence)

Ian Frank graduated from Edinburgh University, where his PhD research was on computer game playing and how to automatically explain a computer's choices to humans. His thesis won a national Distinguished Dissertation award, and he came to Japan to work at ETL in Tsukuba. There, he became involved in another project on games and explanations: creating an automated soccer commentary robot for the Robotic World Soccer (RoboCup) contests. This work won the RoboCup Scientific Challenge award in consecutive years.

He uses the design notion of "wayfinding" to pull together diverse interests: research, professional, and beyond. At his workplace he has been the founding chair of the International and National Relations committee, the founding chair of the Central Planning Office, and the founding chair of the Center for Meta-Learning. He is also a founder and the current Festival Director of the World Music and Dance Festival, a week-long summer event that in 16 years has hosted over 2000 artists from 52 different countries, with a total audience of over 300,000. He has taught at all educational levels, as well as freelancing as a technical instructor. The koto-tsukuri workshops are one result of an integrative approach (for another example, see the Ci-Trade web pages, also in collaboration with Malcolm Field).

Malcolm Field

Professor, Kyorin University
PhD. Cambridge University (Education)

Malcolm Field read Education at the University of Cambridge in England. His dissertation focused on the influence of (Japanese) culture on learning through new technologies. The findings of this work are now gaining increasing acceptance and understanding in education globally. He has written and published in several books on education, and co-edited a book on education across-borders. He is particularly intererested in developing international educational networks and in helping people develop the human and meta skills to utilise the opportnities that such networks provide.

Dr Field has a vast experience in education. He has taught business executives and elementary school children in Japan, has taught at several institutions of higher education, including Waseda University, to both graduate and under-graduate students, and has been involved with at-risk youth in Australia where he sought to provide them with new skills so to rise above their situation. At Future University-Hakodate he teaches meta-skills and strategies in Communication and works closely with Dr Frank on "koto-tsukuri" workshops. "If you change the way you view the problem, the problem changes" and "don't come to me with a problem come to me with solutions" are the messages he tries to impart (and to learn himself).