National Taiwan University

Taipei, Taiwan

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ntu.edu.tw/
Available Courses

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has stimulated the digital-technology revolution for developments of human societies. Furthermore, it keeps bringing up the growth of virtual reality and augmented reality. Starting from mid-1970s, Taiwan proactively promoted ICT developments based on national developing guideline in responding to these technological waves. These developments cover from hardware to software; span from devices to systems; elevate from original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to original brand manufacturer(OBM). These activities facilitate economical growth of Taiwan in recent tens of years.
To mingle understanding of this impressive technical development for students from
other academic fields, in this course, different technical thrusts of ICT in Taiwan are introduced. Furthermore, industries-academia interactions in ICT are also presented to reveal the technical momentums supporting these developments. This course will bring an overview of ICT in Taiwan for international students to stimulate their interests in related research fields.

This course is taught by teachers from the Institute of Plant Sciences and specially invited experts and scholars. Each teacher participates for 2 to 4 hours to teach the current status of research and application in a specific field of plant science, as well as future development trends.

This course is an introductory level of Python programming language.
We start this course by introducing Google Colaboratory, a platform which runs on the cloud and offers free computing resources, will be introduced as your code playground in this course.
Then, basic Python syntaxes will be introduced. To provide a better understanding, some examples or assignments will be given.
Students need to find an issue to address and to solve it with Python as their term-project. A final report about this issue and how you solve it should be submitted at the end of the semester.

This course aims to introduce the poetic and literary features of English modernism by way of close study and discussion of a series of modern English poets, beginning with G. M. Hopkins and ending with Seamus Heaney.

This English course is expected to cover all social sciences related to “Insectivory”. Over the years, whether in the media, investment, or public policy, there has been an increasing interest in eating insects. Because in the near future, insects are very likely to become our food source. Can eating insects really save the world from famine and environmental destruction? Is eating insects harmful or beneficial to human health? Can everyone accept edible insects? Should we promote insectivory? If so, what should be the most appropriate? What kind of insects should we eat? How to breed in large quantities? In this class, we will examine all the issues related to “Insectivory” one by one. Students will discuss with each other the role insects may play in their own future and the reasons for thinking so.
To participate in this class, you do not need to actually eat insects.
All teaching materials will be uploaded to the classroom website, and the course will be open to NTU, NTUST and NTNU alliances, as well as exchange students.

Historical studies of the Western Antiquity display nowadays this particularity that due to the largely fragmentary nature of the direct and indirect witnesses, a totalizing research approach, mobilizing simultaneously various kinds of literary and documentary written sources alongside the material ones, is being constantly and innovatively employed. The present course aims to introduce the students to the Greek literary sources, through a diachronic narrative of the evolution of litterae graecae, as well as a review and contextualization of the genres. A selection of original texts in English translation will be analyzed. The use and utility of literary sources in reconstructing ancient realities will be demonstrated. Comparative studies — vis-à-vis the Latin literature and ancient Egyptian literature — will also be touched upon.

We have many international students in National Taiwan University. To fulfill the needs of international students of English courses, the College of Bio-resources and Agriculture opens a course “Exploring Taiwan – Natural Environmental and Resources”, which is taught in English. The instructors of this course are all the best of Taiwan in their fields, including atmospheric science, environment science, physical and social geography. They will help students to learn more about the beautiful nature of Taiwan. Besides the lectures, students could also learn deeply through the 3 various field trips.

The grand challenge in biology is not to achieve a deeper understanding of profound subjects. Instead, it matters much more to ensure that science is taken seriously. Advances in technology typically outpace the public’s version of the underlying science, leading to public distrust and confusion about the actual benefits and risks involved. Popular culture, particularly movies, often misrepresent scientific facts for entertainment and is usually viewed as part of the problem. However, some films offer excellent opportunities for teachers to draw connections and parallels between entertaining movie science and exciting real-world science. This course was designed for non-biology majors to show how biology themes were used to teach essential ideas. For example, whether DNA is sufficient to create life, how life evolves, what cloning is, and how bionics could improve/impact our future life. Students will additionally explore public misconceptions and naiveté about science perpetuated by movies, as well as the extent to which such films borrow from or, in some cases, even predict scientific facts. This course requires bi-weekly screenings of a feature-length movie before the lectures in the classroom. Films and topics are organized around biological themes. Discussion of films that feature different biological transformations will focus on three aspects—first, distinguishing between science fiction and science fact. Second, understanding the uses of the underlying principles in scientific research, and third, exploring real-world analogies to such fictional concepts as fly-human chimeras and reconstructed dinosaurs.

General Biology is one of the required courses for bio-major students. The lectures are organized as six parts: 1. molecules and processes within cells, 2. how genetic materials transmitted from generation to generation, 3. how organisms evolved, 4 plant forms and functions, 5. animal forms and function, and 6. ecology. Instead of knowing the facts, we will emphasize on forming hypotheses and testing them experimentally. This course is a one-year course, please make sure you allocate Tuesday morning for biology for the entire year.

This course hopes to encourage students to not be limited by their departments or fields, and to explore new international issues from different fields. Through this class, they will be able to expand their horizons and explore their potential in new fields. This course will also encourage students to reflect on and apply their learnings outside of the course, to prepare them for a rapidly-changing world.

The exhibition of the Natural History Museum focuses on the interaction between various creatures in nature and their environment. Its collection includes all kinds of creatures, such as animals, plants, microorganisms, and non-living objects, such as minerals and fossils. The biodiversity recorded by the Natural History Museum allows biologists to conduct comparative research across time and space.
This course will introduce the development of the Natural History Museum over the past three hundred years, and how to conduct business planning in its collection, teaching, and display. The course will actually visit the natural history related museums on the National Taiwan University campus, such as the animal museum, herbarium, insect herbarium, and geological museum. In addition to visiting the collections and displays in the museum, they also practice different methods of specimen making, and actually understand the process of specimen collection.
In addition to the discussion of articles in the course, students in the course should also choose the natural history museum on campus before the end of the semester to develop independent research. The topics include collection specimen research, science teaching plan design, or curatorial planning.

The content can be divided into about sixteen themes. First introduce the basic concepts of nutrition from the introduction and definition, and then respectively describe the three major caloric nutrients including: sugars and foods rich in sugars; fats and foods rich in fats; amines Base acid, protein, protein quality and protein-rich foods. Then we will talk about energy balance and weight control; food size, substitution table and meal design. The second half mainly introduces micronutrients. First, it introduces the introduction, classification and use of vitamins and minerals, and then introduces the nutrients, water and electrolytes, and other minerals related to energy metabolism, blood production, bone growth, and anti-oxidation. Substances and so on.

This is a national program under Ministry of Education. It provides an opportunity for ALL international students and local students to match with kids from (mostly countryside) schools of all 22 cities in Taiwan, including the islands. The format of the program contains both weekly Skype sessions (about 40 min) via internet and fully-sponsored field trips for meetups at the schools. Each international student will be paired up with a local student who will assist with the preparation, communication, and oral translation for the Skype sessions. Two official certificates, one by Ministry of Education and the other by NTU, will be issued to students who meet the required criteria (defined in the ICL ‘User Manual’; see the link below) in order to recognise their contribution.
The goal of the course is to provide a platform for cultural exchange through service learning. It connects the international and local students at NTU with the school kids from all cities in Taiwan, especially for the kids from the country side.

The study of the Antiquity in the classical sense started to develop into sciences of the Antiquity (Alterumswissenschaften) from the 19th century onwards. The current investigation of the ancient history must also be replaced into this larger framework of research, which puts the material culture and archaeological context on the same footing as the texts themselves. The sciences of the Antiquity comprise the classical philology (of which the main tasks are the study of the textual transmission and the establishment of texts), historical linguistics, palaeolography, rhetoric, epigraphy, papyrology, onomastics, chronology and calendars, numismatics, ceramology, field archaeology and iconography. However, as the classical philology remains the foundation of the Altertumswissenschaften and the knowledge of languages constitutes the very basis of philology, the present course aims at teaching ancient Greek and introducing to the history of the texts. Selective explorations into other branches of the sciences of the Antiquity will serve as learning auxiliaries. This course can hopefully also help students better understand, from its roots, the Western civilization from the Renaissance to the present day.

Taiwan, an island country rich in biodiversity, located between Eurasian Plate and Philippine Sea Plate, the geological structure is quite young. The frequent orogeny in Taiwan form many towering mountains, so even though Taiwan is in the tropical and subtropical zone, the temperate climate can still be found at high altitudes. In addition, the creatures, adapted to different climates, are able to survive in Taiwan.
Taiwan is also known from high percentage of endemic species. This is because in the Ice Age, Taiwan was connected to Eurasia. After the Ice Age, Taiwan was isolated by the ocean, and many lives gradually evolved into endemic species on the island. Nowadays, the proportion of endemic species in Taiwan is about 71% in mammals, 17% in birds, 22% in reptiles, 31% in amphibian, 19% in freshwater fish, 25% in plants, and 60% in insects.
Although the land area of Taiwan is only 0.027% of the total of the world, the number of species is as high as 3.8%, which is 150 times the global average. Furthermore, the marine species around Taiwan are about 10% of the world, which is 361 times the average. Taiwan is not a country with large territory, while its rich biological resources are such amazing. Base on that, we invite guest speakers in different fields to talk about the geography, wildlife, ecosystem and culture of Taiwan. They will help students to learn more about the beautiful nature of Taiwan. Besides the lectures, students could also learn deeply through the 3 various field trips (2 assigned trips and 1 self-planned trip).

This course explores the use of ChatGPT, a large language model, as a tool for engaging with philosophical questions and problems. Students will learn how to interact with ChatGPT to generate responses to philosophical questions. The course will cover a range of topics in philosophy, including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind.

In this course, students will learn how to formulate questions that can be answered by ChatGPT, how to interpret ChatGPT’s responses, and how to critically evaluate the limitations and strengths of using machine learning for philosophical inquiry.

Overall, this course aims to develop students’ critical thinking and analytical skills by providing them with a unique opportunity to engage with philosophical questions using cutting-edge technology.