Early education and its effect on students who desire to research their own topics before joining laboratories

This paper examines a new approach to help students select areas of interest in electrical and computer engineering at Hiroshima Institute of Technology. Students are usually expected to select areas of interest after completing 2.5 years of courses covering engineering fundamentals and liberal arts. Many students desire to have opportunities to investigate research topics and potential areas of specialization earlier than this. To support these students, 2 years ago we created two programs: Tech‐ners Jr. and Techno‐club. In this paper, we report on the outline and significance of the first generation of students in Techno‐club by analyzing their final data and questionnaire results. © 2018 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.