The ALTER TABLE statement syntax is explained in the manual at:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/alter-table.html

To put it simply, there are two ways you can alter the table to use a new character set.

1. ALTER TABLE tablename DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;

This will alter the table to use the new character set as the default, but as a safety mechanism, it will only change the table definition for the default character set. That is, existing character fields will have the old character set per column. For example:

mysql> create table mybig5 (id int not null auto_increment primary key,      
    -> subject varchar(100) ) engine=innodb default charset big5;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.81 sec)

mysql> show create table …

This Thursday (March 19th, 14:00 UTC), Susanne Ebrecht will give a MySQL University session on How to Use Charsets and Collations Properly. Susanne works at the MySQL Support team and is an expert in character set issues.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working Flash plugin. You may register for a Dimdim account, but you don't have to. (Dimdim is the conferencing system we're using for MySQL University sessions. It provides integrated voice streaming, chat, whiteboard, session recording, and more.) All MySQL University sessions are recorded, that is, slides and voice can be viewed as a Flash movie (.flv). …