This study examined the process of how the teachers in higher education participated in a community of practice at a distant networking through the experience, implementation, and evaluation of a core curriculum. The results of the analyses suggest that despite the distance where the participants cannot share physical space, it is possible for a full participant who responds with commitment and effort to the symbolic intervention by a senior participant to attain certain proficiency in curriculum design.

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This study focused on the influence of contents of e-mail messages on the occurrences of emotions in communications by e-mail. This paper consists of "Study 1" and "Study 2". In Study 1, 62 university students were randomly paired and asked to participate in an e-mail communication. Using the data obtained from the communication, multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate the influence of the received e-mail contents and receivers' emotional aspects. The influence of these factors -"emoticons", "answer of gender", "question", "emphasis sign", and "number of characters" - was shown in the results. Subsequently, in Study 2, e-mail messages which were manipulated with the above factors were presented to 23 subjects and their emotions when reading the e-mails were measured. The results obtained generally supported the influence of these factors on the occurrences of emotions in communications by e-mail. The results suggested that e-mail communication becomes positive when self-assertion is not strengthened, but when on the contrary, a relation with a partner is valued, and emoticons are utilized.

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This paper proposes a new automatic characteristics analysis method of e-learning contents using the response curve of e-Learning time data in the learning historical data-base. Many researches concerned with the mathematical model of the response curve have been studied, but they have a disadvantage that it is very difficult to interpret the parameters and estimate the parameters. The proposed response curve of e-learning time data in this paper is derived from maximizing the Entropy as same as Nagaoka, Wu (1989), but the unique feature of the paper is to derive the model with the following two parameters by employing the maximizing Entropy method with some restrictions to make the parameters interpretation more easily. The two parameters α and β in the model are respectively interpreted as follows : The parameter α means "Complexity of the content (which means the numbers of simple understanding processes to understand or solve the content)" and the parameter β means "Expected time of the simple understanding process in the content". That is, this means that the average of the learning time for a content is divided into the two parameters α and β. In the other words, the average of the learning time for a content is equivalent to the product of the two parameters α and β. Using these properties of the parameters, this paper proposes a new content evaluation method using α-β plain, which is called "α-β chart". Furthermore, the authors developed a LMS (Learning Management System) which it is inserted into, and show the effectiveness of the system by practical use.

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In this paper, the author aims to figure out in what situation and how the learner can acquire the creativity by using digital media, as a part of Media Literacy. As a result of qualitatively analyzing learners' activities to create some products by digital media in a certain class, the author found the "learning from activity", which consists of three relative factors : acquisition of "Skill" for operation, and understanding of "Style" and "Intention" for expression. And the relationship among these three factors tended to have the following phases : (1) the three factors, "Skill", "Style" and "Intention", are independent of each other so that the learner doesn't know what he can express clearly; (2) the learner connects three factors to form a product somehow; and (3) the learner controls three factors consciously. It is important to learn these three factors spirally and develop them mutually. In order to urge the interaction of the factors, the author found it more effective that the teacher supports the learners, by giving them the "prospect", permitting to "change the schedule" in necessary, and "communicating" with them during the process of their individual works.

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This paper describes the very early stage of CMC in CSCL. A comparative evaluation on two classes for novice software training whose students had different levels of human relations was studied. In particular, we examined the initial process of CMC and how students reached the first point of cooperation on given task. The following results are obtained. 1. In spite of the levels of acquaintance among students, discussions developed in the same direction when roles in the group were given to participants. 2. Difference of inter-personal relational levels affected the period of time by the first point of cooperation on learning tasks. These results suggest that there is room for improvement in instructions on students' self-disclosure, connection between roles and tasks and effective moderation of CMC.

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This study reports how a teacher succeeded in improving his epistemological knowledge on student learning through his participation in the design study. The teacher has been involved in our collaborative design studies for several years. We videotaped our research meetings, collected his reports on practices, and interviewed with him. Our analyses manifested that the teacher gradually developed his epistemological expertise through his collaboration with learning scientists in research meetings. Furthermore, our analysis on the interview with the teacher suggested that several variables such as the participatory structure, previous experiences by the teacher, and his academic interests in the design study itself, facilitated his development.

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Since students discuss by sharing messages written on a BBS (bulletin board system) at a class used information communication technology, the writing skills of messages for BBS are important for students. In this present study, messages written by university students and an instructor on a BBS of the WBT (Web Based Training) System were analyzed qualitatively. The results indicated that it was necessary for students to write messages in accordance with knowledge transforming strategy which was students not only post questions but also provided explanations about why they had questions in order to receive answers to their questions from an instructor. In addition, the results showed that some of the students obtained knowledge transforming strategy with instructions given by an instructor and/or through other students' modeling.

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Academic help-seeking is an learning strategy which is beneficial when students solve difficult problems. The aim of this research was to examine the student's style of help seeking behavior towards both the teacher and peers in relation to the student's motivation (reason) for help seeking and the available support provided from the teacher. The participants of this research were 490 (250 boys; 240 girls) students enrolled in a Japanese junior high school. Results of this study suggested that autonomy was influential in the student's motivation for seeking help from teacher. While on the other hands, the reason for expediency influenced students in seeking help from peers. In addition, reasons for expediency indirectly influenced seeking help from teacher through the perceived teacher's permission toward academic help-seeking.

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In schools, even if there is recognition of the convenienceof IT, there are few examples where IT has been used to simplify tasks, improve efficiency and reduce the burden on teachers. This report focuses on investigations carried out a school, to look at ways to improve the efficiency and accuracy ofrecording students' responses to a questionnaire about their preferred choice of high school. Outlay in new equipment was suppressed to a minimum and a method of recording data, harnessing the convenience and ease of use of a barcode reader, was developed. Each student and high school was allocated a unique barcode that was printed onto a sheet of paper. A student cuts out a required thing from these and sticks it on the questionnaire. This method reduced the mistake was accepted by the student. By utilizing existing equipment, an additional outlay of approximately 10,000 yen and the use of a barcode reader could eliminate typing errors, which often occur when inputting data via a keyboard and greatly reduce the time required to transfer the data.

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