To strike a balance between teaching and research, and since the academic year 106, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has planned and promoted the Operation Directions Governing MOE Subsidies for the Teaching Practice Research Program for Colleges and Universities, hoping to encourage the teaching faculties granted subsidies under the Teaching Practice Research Program for Teachers in Colleges and Universities to design innovative kinds of lesson plans or apply teaching aids and media technology to classroom instruction. These help to enhance the importance of teaching and instructional innovation, as well as develop talent cultivation in universities as a mission.

The collegiate environment has been substantially changed by the program. Unlike academic publications with clear evaluation indicators, it was more difficult for the teachers who emphasized teaching to obtain promotion opportunities in the past. The Teaching Practice Research Program has helped schools to form objective criteria for teaching. The selected merit projects can be regarded as professional research achievements for the basis of teacher evaluation. Through institutionalization, the schools can emphasize teaching and encourage teachers to move forward and engage in teaching practice research.

The sections for review of the Teaching Practice Research Program are divided into twelve subjects, including these ten disciplines: general education (including physical education), education, arts and humanities and design, business and management, society (including law and political science), engineering, mathematics and science, medicine and nursing, biotechnology and agricultural technology, and people’s livelihood, as well as these two projects: University Social Responsibility (USR) and technological practices. The overall ripple effect of the program can be seen through a steady increase in the number of the proposals submitted, with the average acceptance rate of more than 40 percent over the past 4 years – from initially about 2,000 submissions a year to nearly 4,000 in 2021.

The MOE took further action this year by launching the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning to give teaching faculty access to publication, encouraging them to submit academic papers, in line with the required format, on their teaching content which works successfully. In addition to expanding the exchange of teaching achievements, published papers can also be submitted for review as promotion publications. This not only affirms teachers’ teaching abilities, but also facilitates their future career development.

Talent cultivation is an important task for colleges and universities. Through rooting the deep-seated cultivation and diffusion of teaching practice research programs on university campuses, teachers can inject the spirit of professional research into teaching with systematic guidance. The teachers who are enthusiastically devoted to teaching can been seen, and the talent cultivation function of colleges and universities can be emphasized. This is a great and important change in higher education in the Republic of China (Taiwan).