At the General Meeting of the Council of Representatives of Health Sciences for the 2026 academic year (June 1, 2026), Lecturer Takaaki Yoshimura of the Health Sciences field received the top prize in the Young Researcher Education Activity Award Program organized by the Council of Representatives of Health Sciences for the 2026 academic year.
The National University Health Sciences Representatives Council Young Education Activity Awards are presented to recognize efforts made to improve the quality of education, enhance and reform education within national university health sciences departments, and to promote the dissemination of their achievements and content, with the aim of revitalizing and further developing education in national university health sciences departments.
This award recognizes young faculty members who have contributed to improving the quality of education, and to the improvement and reform of education, based on recommendations from the four educational fields of "Nursing," "Clinical Laboratory Science," "Radiological Science," and "Physical Therapy/Occupational Therapy," as defined by the National University Health Sciences Representatives Council.
Details of the Award
[Educational Activity Name] Implementation of Active Learning in the Common Subject "Introduction to Health and Medical Care" for Five Majors
【overview】
With the ultimate goal of "studying health sciences at Hokkaido University," I dedicated myself to developing a course that incorporated active learning into "Introduction to Health and Medical Care," a required subject common to all majors, which focuses on the development of health sciences based on an international and broad perspective that takes into account trends in the international community, rather than being limited to the traditional roles of individual professions.
This course is designed for approximately 200 second-year students in five majors who have advanced to their undergraduate specialized programs, and is positioned as the first interprofessional education course.
Furthermore, the program consists of lectures based on Hokkaido University's goal of "pursuing sustainability toward the realization of a sustainable well-being society (HU VISION 2030)," as well as group work and presentations by students from the five majors.
Based on new international trends in health science such as medical AI, One Health, and Future Earth, this program aims to discuss "what health science should do to achieve the SDGs" and to enable participants to proactively consider and articulate from diverse perspectives how it can contribute to solving current global challenges.
The lecture portion consists of Hokkaido University's policies based on HU VISION 2030 (Sustainability Promotion Organization), how the Department of Health Sciences aims to contribute (Dean of the Department of Health Sciences), and how each professional field contributes (nursing, radiology, laboratory science, physical therapy, occupational therapy).
In the group work sessions, students are assigned to approximately 30 small groups, each comprised of students from five different majors, and each group actively engages in discussions on the assigned tasks.
To respect students' autonomy, faculty members will focus on supporting and encouraging lively discussions.
At the presentation session, each group will summarize their discussions and present their proposals, and awards will be given to outstanding presentations.
In every session, we collected free-form responses from students regarding "what they learned most" and "what they found interesting," and built a "learning cycle" by visualizing and providing immediate feedback through text analysis. We also ensured interactivity by making the teachers' answers to student questions public.
Furthermore, this course also covers medical AI, which has seen remarkable development in recent years. By using this course as an entry point to create a pathway for students to take "Introduction to Medical AI," an interdisciplinary course (elective) for second to fourth-year students that was launched in 2025, many students in the Faculty of Health Sciences have been encouraged to take interdisciplinary courses.
Please check this out for details.
Left: Rika Yano, Vice Dean, School of Health Sciences, Right: Akihiro Ishizu Faculty of Health Sciences Director, flanked by Lecturer Takaaki Yoshimura.