In February 2018, Li Chenxi, an animation teacher, was invited to visit the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. This activity is currently under way.
Waikato University is one of eight public universities in New Zealand, specializing in management, law, computer science and education. It was hailed as Harvard in the Southern Hemisphere by the Daily Telegraph. It was certified as a QS five-star university in 2016. Waikato University campus environment elegant, unique school buildings, everywhere embodies a humanized design concept, academic atmosphere is also very strong, teachers and students harmonious relationship, all kinds of curriculum research groups can be seen everywhere.
Waikato University has seven colleges, of which the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) is composed of three sub-faculties, namely, the School of Arts, the School of Social Sciences and the School of Psychology. The College of Humanities and Social Sciences offers a wide range of courses covering the fields of music, literature and other arts, communications and media studies, psychology, drama, film, television and multimedia. Among them, film and television media and other disciplines among the QS world university discipline ranking TOP200 strong.
When we enter the teaching area, we can see that the staircase classroom is spacious and bright. With the permission of teachers, we can go to the classroom to listen to the class. The teachers will adjust the speaking speed and pronunciation according to the listening level of the students from all over the world to ensure the effective communication of information. The teacher basically adopts the combination of lecture (lecture) and experimental (lab) in the classroom teaching method, that is to say, the chapter knowledge is discussed systematically, and then the practice instruction is carried out in groups, generally speaking one class per week for each course, and experimenting for three hours. Even theoretical courses like Aesthetics, History of Design Art, are taught in this way, just as understanding vision. According to the teachers of this course, paying attention to the unity of theory and practice is the teaching characteristic of Waikato University. Under the background of the distinct teaching characteristics of (polytechnic college) and (university), New Zealand's technical college and research university, Putting forward such a teaching idea can be described as clear-cut.
The course of film and television is representative in the art college. The teaching method attaches great importance to the unity of theory and practice, which not only makes the students have a complete and profound understanding of film and television theory, but also enables the students to be skillful in the practice of contemporary film and television creation. This teaching idea can be reflected by its stereoscopic and comprehensive course examination method. In each course, students must write dissertation, impromptu test of quiz, art creation and so on, in order to obtain credit, through seminar seminar, monographs writing, dissertation, and so on. For example, in the film and television special effects synthesis course, each student is required to use the Discuss a synthesis technique with the team in your group, and then write a research paper about your understanding of the technology. Then each person will have at least one chance to receive a face-to-face question and answer from the teacher and react to the contents of the classroom teaching. Finally, they will use an image workstation to create a set of questions in an independent or collaborative manner. The scoring mechanism encourages students to innovate in theory and practice.
In addition to excellent classroom teaching, Waikato University also has a variety of research portfolios, which have been recognized by domestic and foreign evaluation agencies, and many projects have been funded by research institutes and other research centres. Teacher Li feels this very deeply. He said: "everything at Waikato is impressive and I hope to see more, learn more and deliver more here."