The method to construct a large scale virtual LMS using index information accumulated from multiple distributed LMSs is proposed. By unitizing internet domains and accumulating index information an integrated virtual LMS can be made by arbitrarily combining domains. Index information can be for example, a subject, URL or student information. Students log into the virtual LMS and check their own schedules, they select a subject from the schedule and are redirected to the distributed LMS that is handling that particular subject, then the student studies there. During load testing the system was confirmed to have enough scalability. Also, with this system as long as the distributed LMS is operating normally studies can be continued even if a problem occurs with the virtual system.

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English abstract In the field of Education, a copyrighted work is not distributed with an electronic medium very much at the face-to-face class. In many cases, it is distributed with a paper medium. It is thought that the rule, which is shown as the part corresponding to second clause of a copyright act article 35 in a copyright act article 35 guideline, make it difficult to distribute a copyrighted work with an electronic medium. That guideline prescribes it about a reproduction of a copyrighted work in a school and other educational institutions. As one of the means to solve the problem, there is a system for the purpose of considering copyright protection in the field of education at the time of distributing a copyrighted work with an electronic medium. However, in that system, there are some problems. First, it is pointed out that that it is hard for a user to use it. Then, it is pointed out that it is hard for a network administrator to manage it. To solve these problems, by applying DACS portal to that system, that system was improved. DACS portal is the system realized by the function of displaying static documents dynamically on the network introducing DACS Scheme which manages a whole network by communication control on the client computer. As the result, because it became possible to acquire the copyrighted work with an electric medium, it became easy for a user to use it than before. In addition, it became easy for a network administrator to manage it. For example, network configuration change became needless.

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Two years of high school and university cooperative practice by developing embedded educational materials and exchanging teaching assistants are described. In first year, mainly two types of embedded teaching materials with stand out interfaces are developed by university students. In the next year, some university students joined the high school robot programming class as a teaching assistant using Lego Mindstorms. Furthermore, a robot contest (A local preliminary of World Robot Olympiad ) was held to encourage leaning embedded programming for local high school students. Effects and problems for these activities are discussed in this paper.

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This study deals with 'learner's attributes' and 'effects of interactions' in an experimental e-learning program provided for junior-high students. Previous researches have claimed that: 1) learning effects of an e-learning differ by attributes of the learners, and consequently 2) designing an adequate interactive process are crucial. This study extends above context by targeting on junior-high students who have less weak motivations than university students and adults. First, we execute Factor Analysis in order to detect the factors which affect the learners' routine learning. As a result, three factors, 1) difficulty with comprehension, 2) weakness in motivation, 3) avoidance from study efforts, are extracted. Next, three groups are classified by Cluster Analysis and verified that the participant's perceived value, pre/post exam scores and closed-chat frequency differed in the three groups. As regards the effects of interactions, we carried a Regression Analyses between interactions (i.e. open and closed chats) and exam score improvements for each group. The result shows that a relationship between closed chat frequency and the degree of improvement in preparation-test scores exists.

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We developed an integrated drill shell called "Drill-Factory" for supporting to make effective drills in e-learning. Some drill structures have been proposed by instructional design researchers, which were built into this system, so that users can make various kinds of drills only by entering drill items. The drill structures were analyzed and represented as combinations of drill controlling components, so that customizations can be done to create user-defined drill structures. This system allows users to take their drills to their local environment, once created in the online "Factory". Learning about drill structures were made possible by showing internal processes of controlling each item in a skeleton mode. The evaluation data showed that the users could make drills easily and learned about drill structures. Further issues are discussed regarding some remaining problems.

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We propose an information system and an educational program to support teaching graduate students improve their teaching. Then, we discuss the effectiveness of our system and program by performing a teaching course for graduate students. The main contribution of our work is that we develop a portable and flexible information system that the system consists of response analyzer and class capturing, and propose an educational program to support teaching evaluation effectively and efficiently for teaching improvement. Evaluation through our teaching practice for 14 graduate students confirmed that the proposed information system and the educational program are effective for teaching improvement. Moreover, it is confirmed that our system do not disturb students' learning.

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The attitude survey for the parents concerning the information moral in the elementary school was conducted. Four factors were obtained by factor analysis to promote the parents cooperation with the school, and they are "Content of guidance at home", "The parent's morality improvement", "Situation awareness in the home", and "Contact to the school". The model chart was developed with the relation of each factor, and a coordinated program was executed based on this model chart. The consideration for information moral of the parents after the practice of the program was compared with before the program. The result shows that the parent's information morality and their attitude for cooperation with the school were improved by executing the coordinated program.

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What factors are responsible for boosting students' interest in study and their satisfaction in their university life? Students at this university were polled on various possible factors. We analyzed and sampled the survey results in order to fully examine any causal relationship between samples, based on structural equation models. It was revealed that communication between teachers and students stimulates students' eagerness to study and influences their satisfaction in university life. It was also suggested that students' relationships with friends neither significantly affects their satisfaction in university life nor is closely linked to their motivation to study. A future task will be to find clues for providing support to activate communication between teachers and students.

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This study aims to reveal the opinions of and reality for teachers in remote areas/islands concerning the use of computers and teleconference through comparison with teachers in urban areas. Specifically, comparisons between teachers in remote areas/islands and teachers in urban areas were made with regard to: 1) the reality of the use of computers in and out of class, and 2) the reality of and the needs for the use of teleconferencing. Our results showed that there was no difference between the teacher groups' use of computers out of class. In class, however, teachers in remote areas/islands were found to utilize computers more frequently than the other group for presenting materials and searching information, as well as in situations where their students used computers as tools of expression. In terms of the use of teleconferencing, there was no difference found between the two groups, although teachers in remote areas/islands were found to be more positive about the use of teleconferencing than the urban group. Teachers in remote areas/islands were found to have especially greater needs for teleconferencing concerning comprehensive study, collaborative study with separately located schools, staff training, and meeting with other schools' teachers.

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This study investigated that the way of thinking and knowledge with the necessary to make use of ICT at the Kindergarten in early childhood practitioners training course. Subjects were 182 woman college students, and asked to reply to the questionnaire. There were structured 4 of latent variable from the 10 questionnaire categories; (a) Motivation to use the information media in the kindergarten, (b) Knowledge about the information media, (c) Consciousness of the information media, (d) Fundamental understanding about the early childhood education. The results of Structural Equation Modeling suggested that: (1) It was the consciousness of the information media mostly to make them have a motive to use the information media in the kindergarten. (2) To make them promote the use of the ICT in the Kindergarten, it was assumed to make them have interest in the information media and to make a media anxiety dispelled in early childhood practitioners training course. (3) There were few relations with the motive to use ICT with supporting a traditional early childhood education idea.

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The research developed a psychological scale for measuring university students' awareness of "making artifacts" which is directly related to education of technologies for engineering products. The pretest and formal test were conducted to verify the validity of the scale, in particular, focusing on the relationships between awareness of making artifacts and anxiety toward computer and mathematics, which are subjects related to education of making artifacts. The results showed the internal consistency, factorial validity, and cross validity of the "making artifacts" awareness scale. Moreover, they suggested that the students with higher anxiety toward operation and learning of computer and mathematics had more negative awareness of making artifacts. Furthermore, the results suggested that there were differences on the relationships between awareness of making artifacts and anxiety toward computer and mathematics, even in the students at faculty of science and engineering, dependent on the characteristics of the departments that they belonged.

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For the purpose of improvement of an instruction for spreadsheet skills acquisition, I developed the multimedia teaching materials and used them in class. I requested the students who enrolled in the class to take the third and the second grade of the spreadsheet certificate examination by JAPAN TESTING ASSOCIATION to motivate them. The materials are the movie files which include the captured movies showing correct answers of the training tests for the examination on a PC screen with narration, photos and text boxes. In the class the students self-learned the materials and asked their questions to the instructor individually. As a result, the ratio of the successful applicants for the certification examination increased from the conventional data around 80% to 96.1% with the third grade and from the conventional data around 40% to 77.1% with the second grade. In the class the numbers of student's questions asked were decreased so much and the time of the exercise period was remarkably shortened. Furthermore, all the students replied that the teaching materials were very effective or effective to the questionnaire that I carried out after finishing this course.

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This paper examined the relationship between the purposes of essay tests that were either for college entrance or for employment, and their scoring systems used by study-aid books for such tests. Comments made on 342 essays that appeared in study-aid books were sorted, based on similarity, into 10 categories. Extracted factors, along with scores given to each essay, were multiple regressed. The effective factors extracted for the employment exams were "whether the idea is unique and realistic" and "logical structure of the essay", a result consistent with the said-purposes of such exams. For the college entrance exams, the primary factor "logical unfolding of opinion in accordance with the task requirement" solely accounted for more than 70% of the scores, which is partly inconsistent with said-purposes of entrance exams.

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