Special Research I

Session 7: Study Case in IT Field (1) (Lecturer: Hiroshi Nakano)

Please carry out “This Session's Task” after reading and understanding the following contents.

[Introduction]

 “E-Learning” is an abbreviation for “electronic learning”, which is a very broad term. Interpretations of this word could vary widely. For example, there are various people ranging from those who say that the lesson in the classroom using a liquid crystal projector connected to a personal computer can be categorized as e-Learning to those who say that e-Learning means the synchronization of VOD and presentation reference materials, or those who argue that e-Learning should be based on remote access, Web-based and the Internet, keep learning records, use a variety of media and have interactivity.

 The basic ICT system, which supports this so-called “e-Learning”, is called LMS. However, these days, this term is not easy to understand either. As you know, LMS is an abbreviation for Learning Management System, and originally it meant no more than a learning system to manage the progress of the learning status of the students by registering the course (lecture subject), the lecturer in charge and the students who take the course and storing the instructional materials/contents. However, LMS nowadays has, as a matter of course, a function to develop contents, test tools, task tools, and discussion tools. In addition, many of them also have an internal email and chat tool, a presentation tool, and other functions such as search, dictionary, Wiki and Blog.

 In my opinion, these days, it is more appropriate for us to call it a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) [1] rather than calling it a “Learning Management System” because it is a system to provide an environment to support on-line learning.

 As mentioned above, simply put, my current research interest lies in the area of “supporting VLE by ICT.”

 Let me introduce my career history (research history).

 In 1987, I started my career when I took up a tutor position at the School of Physics, Faculty of Arts, University of Nagoya, carrying out experimental studies in relation to searching for such new materials as superconductors and quasi-crystals as well as applying them to various devices. In terms of my involvement in computing, I was engaged in the development of hardware to control experimental devices and writing, mainly in C language, of their control programs as well as the simulation program which compares the results of experiments with theories. During this period, although I used ICT as a means of research, I was also interested in ICT itself, developing MS-DOS and Macintosh applications in FORTRAN, BASIC, LISP, Pascal and assembler languages.

 After that, in 1993, I became a lecturer in physics. However, immediately after that, a new faculty, the School of Informatics and Sciences was established and I moved to the then School of Basic Information Processing. This was my first turning point. There, I was responsible for information related education, teaching such subjects as “Introduction to the Internet” and ”Programming Practical Training” and delivering lectures in relation to a variety of topics including elementary Java, UNIX commands, image conversion, elementary 3DCG, GUI library programming, formula manipulation (Mathematica), and document (LaTeX) in an excellent environment for that time with a UNIX work station or a Macintosh notebook for each student. Under such an environment, I built a system enabling the online presentation of various materials, submission of essays etc. This was a good experience for me as well.

In addition, in parallel with this, I was also responsible for basic experiments in physics for the whole university. There, I added a new subject called “Simulated physical experiments”, building a simulated experiment environment which uses NIS certification and file sharing via a network based on a private network (NFS) which consisted of about 30 Linux-based computers.

 After that, I became responsible for graduation study projects when the first students of the School of Informatics and Sciences were in the senior year. This became the second turning point of my career. I had to think about the subject for their graduation study projects. I thought that it would be appropriate to look for the subjects in the middle field between ICT and physics because the preference of the students was obviously different from what I had been studying myself until that time. One of the subjects I selected, as a result, was 3DCG programming in which I was also involved a little during the course of teaching. We created a space, using 3DCG, which has an opposite dimension (1/length) as against actual space to study the structure of an unusual material called quasi-crystal, to help study the physical properties. Another subject was the development of a remote and virtual experiment program for educational purposes, developing such experiments [2], using Java applet and Java3D, as operate experimental devices located a distance from Web browser as well as those simulation programs that help virtual experiments which use 3DCG and/or understanding of the phenomenon. While I was researching how to use 3DCG for educational purposes, I came acrossTEELeX?a large virtual reality device at the National Institute of Multimedia Education (NIME) where I often stayed overnight to carry out joint research[3].

 The third turning point of my career was the establishment of Kumamoto University Center for Multimedia and Information Technologies?in 2002.The center was envisaged as an institution responsible not only for the administration of information networks, but for the basic information-related education for the whole university as well. In addition, it was designed to have a computer-aided education department for the purpose of research and development of an education/research system that takes full advantage of the multimedia environment. When I applied for the professor position, I was lucky enough to be employed there, and since then my main work has been related to information education and/or educational systems for the whole university.

 My first assignment was to introduce LMS, which I started from visiting universities in the US to see the system and having discussions with various companies. In 2003, I started parallel operations (not for the whole university, but for some selected purposes and for those who were interested in them) of WebCT, Internet Navigware and WebClass on a small-scale, actually using them for a variety of lectures and so on. Eventually, it was decided that WebCT would be installed for the whole university, and I built a system to link the WebCT data with SOSEKI, the information system of Kumamoto University[4 (Ch.6)]. Based on that, I embarked on a large-scale program to make basic information education, which was one of the original tasks of the Center for Multimedia and Information Technologies, required courses for every student in the university and available on WebCT. In the process, all the members got together to install such changes as making all the textbooks available online, automatic recording of attendance, utilization of confirmation tests [5] and so on.

 Through these processes, I was convinced that the introduction of educational support by ICT including assurance tests and online discussions should improve the effectiveness of education, depending on how it is used, at many education sites regardless of whether it is face-to-face or distant. Therefore, I established an office for material development to start supporting the development of online materials. However, as almost all the staff including myself did not have a theoretical background, I felt that it was really necessary for us to have instructional designers, of which I had heard when I visited the US, to develop such support throughout the whole university. Therefore the Center for Multimedia and Information Technologies also pleaded the case for the necessity of instructional designers to the university executives.? This move led to the establishment of Graduate School of Instructional Systems (Instructional Systems Program) [4 ( Ch.4)] to train instructional designers, as there were only very few of them in Japan.

 Eventually, the Instructional Systems Program was established, making it possible for us to cooperate with the specialists of Instructional Design when we do research in this field. We implemented, based on uPortal and CAS the course portal that was designed mainly by the Instructional Design team [4 ( Fig.5)].

 In summary, in relation to supporting education with ICT, I have been carrying out practical research using a variety of approaches including all kinds of remote experiments, virtual experiments, simulation, LMS and portal. In relation to future study direction, I would like to take full advantage of the environment and the assistance of the people around me to carry out further studies on the virtual learning environment (VLE) supported by ICT. I would like to build a system with an aim to achieve an online learning environment, which would be educationally more effective and study the products generated throughout the process.

 As we have seen in Block 1, research work starts with “looking for the subject of the research”. Therefore, I agree with the opinion of Pref. Suzuki “You should not take the most interesting step away from the student”, I would like you students to identify the research subject yourself. Although I will help you to set the subject to an appropriate level for a master's thesis, the level of the master's thesis when it is finalized depends on your own efforts. These days, there are graduation theses or even master's theses which look fantastic at a glance, but the students have difficulty in answering questions when they present them because much of the work was done by their teachers or senior students. I expect you to write a kind of master's thesis of which, even if the level may not be very high, you can answer any questions, as long as the question is related to what you have done, because you have done everything by yourself; of which you are so confident that you can say to other people, “I am ready for anything, come what may.”

Reference