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2020.0110

Dean of School of Learning Informatics Tsai Chin Chung Awarded Life-time National Chair Professor

Dean of School of Learning Informatics Tsai Chin Chung has been working on science education and internet learning for more than two decades. Recently, he was given the 23rd National Chair professorships, which is also his second one after 2014. The awarding ceremony will be held on January 20th. Dean Tsai, age 49, is the youngest Honorary life-time National Chair professor in history.

Professor Tsai is known for his humorous characteristic. He studied Physics at NTNU and went to Harvard, Columbia for master and doctoral degree in Education. He has taught in Chiao Tung University and NTUST. In his academic career, he has published more than 300 SSCI papers. These papers are of high quality and he was given the Citation Classic Award from Institute of Science Information. With the encouragement of Former President Chang Kuo En, Tsai Chin Chung came back to NTNU and established the Program of Learning Sciences and led the Institute for Research Excellence in Learning Sciences in 2017.

Now he reviews dozens of well-known journals and is highly recognized Internationally. Tsai has reached several major break-through in academically. He was given Excellent Teacher Award, Ministry of Education (MOE) in 2013 and Merit MOST Research Fellow Award, Ministry of Science and Technology. This is the prestigious honor given to research fellow by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Tsai started from 'constructivism', which has had a profound influence on the education industry in the past 20 years. His research results are divided into three major directions. First, the impact of scientific understanding on scientific teaching and learning caused by constructivism. Second, different learning concepts of learners and their possible impact on learning, and the third one is the construction of an online learning environment.

How to utilize the Internet for teaching is one of the important education trends in the 21st century. Tsai has put forward many new insights on online learning. For example, the Internet should be regarded as a tool of 'knowledge', not just as a tool of 'cognition' and 'metacognition'. Foreign scholars have paid attention to this concept in recent years.

Tsai thanked his research partners who help to realize their dreams and thanked his family for their unconditional support. He also hoped that more young scholars could follow his steps and fulfill their dreams.