Waseda e-Teaching Award

ICTを効果的に活用した授業のGoodPracticeを表彰します!

オンデマンド授業部門

新城 直樹
上江洲 弘明
折井 麻美子
向後 千春
佐渡島 紗織
戸田 貴子 / Takako Toda
深澤 良彰 / Yoshiaki Fukazawa
細川 英雄
森田 裕介

CCDL授業部門

太田 宏 / Hiroshi Ohta
近藤 悠介
砂岡 和子
根岸 純子

Course N@vi活用部門、その他

荒巻 恵子
尾澤 重知
上沼 正明
武沢 護 / Mamoru Takezawa
田中 久稔
西村 昭治
船木 由喜彦
三尾 忠男
吉田 賢史

CCDL Classes Section Award

Learning specialized knowledge from multiple points of view through cross-cultural distance learning with overseas graduate schools

Hiroshi Ohta
Professor, Faculty of International Research and Education

Professor Ohta teaches a course named “Global Environmental Politics and Policies,” which delivers weekly distance learning classes by networking Waseda University and several overseas universities. Students have gained a lot from learning specialized academic knowledge concerning international themes together with students from different countries.

Using a teleconference system to deliver overseas graduate school classes via live streaming

This course is, in principle, an advanced course for third-year and fourth-year students of the School of International Liberal Studies, with classes held twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays.

The Wednesday classes include participatory activities, such as mock international conferences on environmental problems and simulations of international negotiations, in addition to regular lectures.

On Fridays, network-based interactive classes are provided using a teleconference system. These classes originated in the “Asia Pacific Initiative,” a project which the University of Hawaii launched in 2002 to develop online learning materials concerning human resource development and environmental conservation through cooperation with universities and research institutes across the Asia-Pacific region. Waseda University joined this initiative in 2009 and its partners for this year are the University of Hawaii, the Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand), the National University of Samoa, the University of the Ryukyus, and the United Nations University. The participating students are all graduate students, except for some undergraduate students of Waseda University who have enrolled in the course.

These interactive classes are mainly on the themes of climate, energy, and food security. Each week, a 60-minute lecture is held at the designated host university for that week and is streamed real-time to the other universities using the teleconference system. These lectures are taught not only by faculty members of the universities but also by guest speakers invited from outside. Each lecture is followed by a 30-minute question-and-answer session in which participants, including those who have watched the lecture on screens in their respective universities, ask questions and make comments, to which the lecturer responds. The idea behind this is that just listening to a lecturer in a unilateral way can be boring for students.

Although some of the participating universities are located in different time zones, these classes are now delivered in the third period of Fridays, Japan-time, to suit the convenience of Waseda University, which has the largest number of participants of all the universities.

Using an external LMS for submission of assignments and BBS discussions

Distance learning can result in students just listening to lecturers passively. To prevent this, the course uses many techniques to encourage the active participation of students, such as having students submit their assignments online. For example, in 2012, students were required to record their daily activities to find out how much carbon dioxide they produced and later report the results of efforts they made to reduce their CO2 emissions.

In addition, the course uses a BBS system to allow for discussions between fellow students. An external LMS (“Learning Management System”) called Moodle is used for these activities outside course hours. The Moodle system was chosen due to its advantages over Course N@vi, considering that not only students of Waseda University but also those from several other universities participate in the course.

In another attempt to encourage the active participation of students, the course requires them to give presentations in the last two of the 15 interactive classes, in which several groups of students per class deliver their presentations using PowerPoint slides and other supporting materials. Representatives of Waseda Universities are selected through a competition held in the Wednesday classes, in which faculty members and students decide who are to give presentations as their representatives. Each of these student presentations is followed by a 10- to 20-minute question-and-answer session.

Friday class: a student presentation
Providing follow-up support through non-shared classes to help students with advanced subjects from interactive classes

This course is delivered in English, both in the Wednesday and Friday classes. As the School of International Liberal Studies basically provides all its courses in English, students have no problem having discussions in English. The problem may be that they need to discuss quite advanced subjects because the rest of the participants in this course are graduate students. “The level is so high that a certain level of specialized knowledge is a prerequisite for participating in the classes. So, we sometimes use the Wednesday classes to provide students with the knowledge they lack, by explaining difficult terms, reviewing particularly difficult parts of Friday classes, and so on. Given that there may be students who have difficulty digesting what they learn in Friday classes alone, providing two classes a week is effective in allowing the whole course to function organically.”

Waseda University students are also required to pass end-of-semester examinations to prove their understanding of what they have learned in the Wednesday and Friday classes. However, there are also cases in which students are exempted from these examinations, depending upon their level of participation in the mock conferences on Wednesdays and the presentations on Fridays. “Students who have taken part in these class discussions have conducted their own research and submitted reports summarizing it. As a result, they are considered to have a better understanding of each discussed problem in terms of knowledge. For the other students, it is compulsory to attend classroom examinations to prove that they have acquired the comprehensive knowledge that they are supposed to have learned.”

Learning things that cannot be learned in classroom teaching alone from interactions with students in other countries and other areas of study

Although they are only undergraduate students, the students of Waseda University have their own strengths as well. “Most of the students of the other universities specialize in scientific or economic subjects. However, the students of Waseda University attend the Wednesday classes on international politics, which give them different perspectives. They may not match up with the students of the other universities in terms of technical knowledge concerning climate change, energy issues, and so on, but they have the ability to express well-grounded opinions about how to resolve problems and how to consider social issues.”

At the same time, this course provides students of Waseda University with an invaluable opportunity to experience advanced technical approaches to problem solving. “Our area of specialty is in studying environmental problems from an international relations point of view. Listening to those specializing in other areas talking about technical matters can be seen as a case study in a way. Highly motivated students can learn a lot from it.”

In 2012, students from Micronesia and Tanzania were chosen to give presentations for the University of Hawaii. “As Japanese students hardly have the opportunity to be given first-hand information about what is happening in these countries, this has provided them with new knowledge and intrigued them a lot. Getting to know different perspectives from a diverse range of countries allows them to acquire a wide range of knowledge that cannot be obtained if they only study in classrooms in Waseda University.”

The excitement of attending overseas classes and participating in more technical learning has resulted in students becoming more academically interested. “They realize how much they don’t know. This gives them an incentive to find out more on their own.” Professor Ohta believes that the basic purpose of education is to enable students to think independently, identify problems for themselves and find solutions to the problems by themselves. “The most important thing is that they should be able to find out what is wrong in the world and what they can do about it; in other words, recognize problems as problems.”

Friday class: interactions with partner universities
Course themes are international, which makes it more effective to learn together with overseas students

This course also utilizes a student evaluation system. Responses collected from students show that their satisfaction level is quite high. According to past data, student satisfaction tends to decline when the number of participating universities exceeds ten. This is why the course now allows only a limited number of universities to join it. The United Nations University awards a completion certificate to each student who has completed the Friday interactive classes. This is another incentive for students.

The School of International Liberal Studies makes it compulsory for each student whose mother tongue is Japanese to do a one-year study abroad program. However, this course allows students to attend the same classes as overseas students while they are in Japan by taking advantage of ICT. “Participating in classes with overseas students who are far away allows students to experience classes that reflect the different strengths and areas of specialty of different universities. Given that this course is about international issues, it is particularly worthwhile to learn together and compare notes with overseas students. We are constantly thinking of how to improve the course in the future so as to encourage more students to more actively participate in classes, for example by setting aside some weeks exclusively for discussions between students, in which students freely exchange their views about given themes in distance learning classes.”

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