This paper describes an online college course named “e-school,” focusing on its ten years of experience and its support system. A follow-up study of e-school graduates shows that the success of online higher education courses depends on the following three factors: (1) educating students in the first year about effective learning through online mediums, (2) quality of mentors and mentoring systems for supporting online communication for students, and (3) training in writing and statistics for research work.

View full abstract

Moodle is an opensource LMS that is distributed under the GNU General Public License, and is one of the world's most common LMSs. It is used also in many Japanese higher education institutions, and unlike commercial LMSs, Moodle often needs some self-help efforts for sustainable and continuous operation. This document describes how Moodle development is organized in a sustainable way, and examples of how Moodle sites in Japanese Universities are stably administrated and maintained.

View full abstract

In this paper, we cover a career portfolio as an example of a sustainable system. We introduce several preceding cases, at inside and outside the country, capable of implementing its portfolio cycle humanly and systematically. Moreover, we introduce Role-Model based e-Portfolio (RMP) as a study case aiming to establish a sustainable portfolio via systematic assistances. These cases explain that a sustainable e-portfolio requires a clear, long-term goal setting and effective operation of both human and systematic assistances.

View full abstract

Tablet terminal is a device that provides a new learning environment and has a sustainability that can be easily introduced in many educational fields. Our purpose is the implementation of the same testing environment as the traditional printed test using the characteristics of the tablet devices. And we have developed a prototype system which is a tablet typed testing environment. Our system can recognize multiple-choice elements of the problem file in JPEG image by using image analysis technology in order to make the JPEG file the teaching material for automatic scoring. Learner can answer choice problems with handwriting operation on the tablet. Our system recognizes the answer to score it automatically. Our approach realizes the environment in which the author can create the problem file using her/his familiar applications that can output JPEG file. Moreover, the teaching material is platform indepen­dent, so it can be diverted to other usage like a print exercise. In this paper, we describe our approach of implementation, our prototype system and the operation verification for usefulness of our system.

View full abstract

This article discusses on the basic properties useful for characterizing various kinds of atmospheres possible to be created by the students during a class, as well as the observation features to be obtained from the video of the class for estimating the degrees of the atmospheres for the basic properties, aiming to recognize the classroom atmosphere from its video for reviewing the class for further improvement. We propose a pair of basic properties, which we call “interest–disinterest” and “liberal–restrained”, by applying Russell's circumplex model of affect to characterization of atmospheres, and show that the rate of the students looking forward and the amount of frame difference of the video respectively have good correlations with the degree of the atmospheres characterized by those two basic properties from the result of an experiment using videos of a seminar in a university class.

View full abstract

For beginners to learn programming, the combination of the control structure with repetition and conditions increases the level of difficulty. We proposed to use event-driven in order to reduce the burden of programming. And we have been using this method in teaching programming for 15 years. In this paper, we report on features of our system and exercises of programming which have been given to students in the classroom. These exercises are characterized by being able to meet various students to derive their results while devising. Additionally, the programming method to use event-driven can be work together seamlessly to learning of the upper grades.

View full abstract

In a higher education, improvement of generic skills (especially team work skills) is attracting attention. Many universities have begun an active learning include Project Based Learning and Problem Based Learning (PBL). Tottori University develops new education curriculum with creation for students from all faculties. Students learn teamwork skills as follows: sharing purposes, distribution of roles, sharing information and logical argument. There are two problems. (1) Students do not write a good reflection report. It is necessary to improve their quality. (2) Students do not describe their argument with the reason.This is the case study of activities with Computer Supported Collaborative Leaning (CSCL). The first result of this study is an increased number of characters per report by visualizing discussion. The second result showed a students' understanding of the discussion.

View full abstract

There are many reports about quality improvement of education by using ICT devices at educational institutions. ICT devices were introduced at Kagawa University. However, there are many problems with their operations. In order to solve them, the authors have developed the ICT-based Teaching Support Desk System. It has been carried out according to the Cycle of Development and Operations. The Cycle of Development and Operations consists of Analysis, Design, Development, and Operation. This paper describes the outline of the ICT-based Teaching Support Desk System, and the Cycle of Development and Operations. An actual practice according to the Cycle of Development and Operations set out concrete steps for solving problems which many educational institutions face.

View full abstract

The main topic addressed in this paper is to report our practices and analyses regarding to a JAIST lecture archiving system. This system records face-to-face lectures mainly held at School of Information Science, JAIST, which stores and delivers the high-definition quality streaming videos as complementary learning materials for graduate students who have diverse backgrounds. This paper focuses to analyze the access log and the students' questionnaire from our 4 years' experience in order to find improvements of the system for sustainable system updating.

View full abstract

We have been running a learning management system called “Iⁿ Assistant” at Iwate University since 2007 and users have been steadily increasing. This paper examines requirements for large-scale and sustainable operation of such learning management systems. In addition to developing systems in response to some observations made from preceding cases, the committee in charge of faculty development have engaged in development and management of this “Iⁿ Assistant” system. Thus, we set the aim of this system to be for faculty development and dedicated to providing trainings for users to promote their understanding. As a result, we identified that the sustainable management of this system requires not only the functions given to the system but also building user support mechanisms including continuous trainings for users, especially targeting new users.

View full abstract

In the present study, we propose an operational scheme of e-Learning utilization in elementary and secondary education, abstracting key issues from knowledge obtained in our case study performed in Hokkaido area for 10 years. Our scheme consists of operation of the e-Learning system with distributed management roles, maintenance of drill-type of materials under systematic body of knowledge, and supporting service in collaboration with the university, and regional elementary and secondary educations. The validity of our scheme is discussed, using the data obtained from the case study such as results of questionnaires for both learners and teachers, and access data to the e-Learning system.

View full abstract