Future Outlook

In the 2019 and 2020 academic years, the program was disrupted by the surging pandemic; consequently, many activities and achievement presentations had to be carried out in an alternative format or cancelled. However, the Taoyuan City Autodidactic 3.0 Lab team dares not to forget its purpose of “expanding own horizons and breaking free from existing framework of learning,” and has taken it a step at a time to protect the rights of educational autonomy and choice. Facing double challenges of severe pandemic and quality control of learning, the lab’s team continues to formulate groundbreaking plans for the future. 

1. Exploratory Courses: In addition to regularly offering popular existing courses, the lab will continue to develop new thematic courses, offering students opportunities of diverse exploratory learning. Since the number of students participating in the program has increased, and quotas of some electives have been exceeded, the lab will establish a student screening mechanism in the future, in aim to achieve reasonable allocation of resources, allowing more students of experimental education to join the program and making the best use of learning resources. Also, the lab continues to explore courses that are suitable for online learning, so that despite the external uncertainties, it can still offer students rich learning resources. 

2. Electives at another School: After the end of this academic year, the lab will continue to cooperate with Chung Yuan Christian University, National Yang Ming Chao Tung University, and Ming Chuan University, which have already signed MOU; also, to prevent local students of Taoyuan from travelling too far, the lab has added two local universities, National Central University and Yuan Ze University, as its partners in the 2021 academic year. In the future, the lab plans to reach out to other nearby universities and senior high schools and vocational schools, hoping to trailblaze a new path of learning for those students with learning willingness and capability, so that they can explore own interests and plan learning directions early, ultimately achieving the goal of helping students to nurture expertise. 

3. Learning Trips and Visits: In terms of theme selection, the lab continues to integrate school resources of instructors of the exploratory courses, enabling students to visit university departments and access professional equipment. Also, the lab adds courses on local culture and environmental education to help students to learn in different aspects and verify what they learn in classroom. 

4. Winter and Summer Camps: Winter and summer camps were affected by the pandemic in the 2019 and 2020 academic year; however, past activities were well-received by students. To further expand the resources and services, the lab plans to admit regular school education students during holidays in the future, providing students with different educational backgrounds an opportunity to interact, enhancing value-added beyond what is taught in the courses. 

5. Classic Keynote Speeches: The core of this seminar is to “learn from icons.” Reviewing the 26 seminars held in the past, the lab strives to uphold the principle of multiple intelligences, and will focus on balanced and diverse intelligences in the future, continuing to invite outstanding professionals from all sectors to give keynotes and realizing the real roadmap of “expanding learning horizons.”

Over the past two years, the pandemic has changed the current situation of education, but also highlighted the importance of “autonomous learning.” With our joint effort, the lab looks forward to further establish itself as the leading brand in “autonomous learning.”