Special Research I

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

[Study Case]

 I would like to introduce studies, among other study examples I have supervised so far, that are more or less related to educational supports using IT. However, there is no need whatsoever for you to feel obliged to make your study connected to these examples.

An example of research & development related to Instructional Design Based e-Learning Support. (2007-2008)

 Mr. Wannous is a government-sponsored foreign student. He started master program of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in Graduate school of Science and Technology from 2007, and he continues his study in PhD program. He has some experiences of working in the development section of a big company for several years.
With the wide spread of e-learning platforms among educational and training-delivery organizations, it is necessary to provide not only online documents and media resources, but also high quality online practice-acquiring facilities where learners can apply what they have studied. This is particularly important in ICT field where practice is a major part of the learning process. ICT graduates are supposed to have a certain level of hands-on experience in dealing with network devices, designing, and troubleshooting a network scenario. Addressing this issue he introduced NVLab, a web-based environment designed to provides learners with tools to: draw a Computer Network diagram and save it on the server. realize this diagram on the server. remotely connect to the machine hosting the network. configure the network devices and test the functionality of their design. NVLab makes use of two technologies: Virtualization (Xen) and Virtual Network Computing (VNC) to achieve the goal. Virtualization is used for creating the network devices included in the diagram the learner has produced. Each device is realized as a Virtual Machine (VM) that will run an Operating System instance, and the connection between these VMs is done through software solution provided by the Virtualization layer. On the other hand, Virtual Network Computing enables learners to remotely access the NVLab server through their web browsers to configure and test the functionality of the network they designed.
He presented a poster at some Japanese academic meetings [1] and at an international conference [2].

1. Muhammad WANNOUS, Hiroshi NAKANO and Kenichi SUGITANI, Implementing Virtualization and Virtual Network Computing in NVLab, a Web-Based Computer Networks Laboratory, 33rd Annual Conf. of Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education, pp.478-479 (2008).
2. Muhammad Wannous, Hiroshi Nakano, Toshihiro Kita and Kenichi Sugitani, Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET 2007), Kumamoto, Japan, July 10-13, pp.196-199 (2007)

An example of research & development related to Instructional Design Based e-Learning Support. (2008)

 Mr. Nakajima is a distance student of Graduate School of Instructional Systems. He has been working as an officer or administrator in a university's computer center. He is really interested in Instructional Design, and tried to apply the ARCS model to help e-Learning supporters. Because Instructional Design is not my field, my contribution is indirect.
It is true that many Japanese universities are diligently working on activities to develop e-learning and are having difficulty in achieving efficient and effective outcomes compared to a university's own expectation. he founds that it is better to focus on a person (or a section) in charge of supporting instructors and the university's e-learning development.
The role of that person is important whether or not the one is a professor or staff. The one will be able to succeed when the person has a method of checking what to do concretely and clearly to provide proper information and assistance for achieving better outcomes in e-learning. In this study, we propose a checklist for e-learning supporters based on ID theories, especially on the ARCS+AT Model, which is based on the ARCS Model proposed by Prof. Keller.
The research is aimed to prove the effectiveness of the ARCS+AT model and the checklist at the actual situation of any university and also to improve its quality by analyzing the feedbacks from some universities like the results of the test use of the checklist, comments to the checklist and the answers to the questionnaire.
He is convinced that this study will develop ARCS+AT model and the checklist and the model will contribute to Japanese Higher Education in the near future.
He presented a poster at the 6th Kumamoto University Forum in Indonesia [1].

1. Koji Nakajima, Hiroshi Nakano, Fujio Ohmori, Katsuaki Suzuki and Toshihiro Kita, An Instructional Design Based Checklist for e-Learning Supporters in Higher Education, The 6th Kumamoto University Forum, Poster session, Surabaya, Indonesia, Nov, 5-6, 2008.

An example of research & development related to citizen e-Learning community. (2007-2008)

 Mr. Murashima is a distance student of Graduate School of Instructional Systems. He has been working as a system engineer in a big company's blanch in Kumamoto city, and is related to the network system in Kumamoto university. He, therefore, we can meet easier than other distance students. We started "Kumamoto Internet Shiminjuku" -- Citizen e-learning community in Kumamoto from 2005, and he is interested in automated system for making e-Learning contents based on Instructional Design.
Since lifelong learning has become important and information and communication technology using the Internet has been ubiquitous today, he established "Kumamoto Internet Shiminjuku" -- Citizen e-learning community in Kumamoto, Japan with some members including me, which is a lifelong e-learning project by citizens' group. This article shows the example of practicing e-learning in "Kumamoto Internet Shiminjuku" and refers to the meaning and the possibility of elearning use for lifelong learning. Moreover, in order to make elearning courses more effective and efficient, he is studying and applying instructional design theories for citizen e-learning.
He did an oral presentation at the 6th Kumamoto University Forum in Indonesia [1].

1. Ryoichi MURASHIMA, Hiroshi NAKANO, Toshihiro KITA, Shiro KITAMURA, Junko NEMOTO, Katsuaki SUZUKI and Tsuyoshi USAGAWA, Advantages of e-Learning for Citizen Learning Community - A Case of "Kumamoto Internet Shiminjuku" -, The 6th Kumamoto University Forum, Oral session, Surabaya, Indonesia, Nov, 5-6, 2008.

An example of research & development related to Learning Object Model (2007)

 Mr. Toyonaga was a distance student of the inaugural class of Graduate School of Instructional Systems. He has been working as an chief ICT instructor in big company for long yeas, and he already had many experience of instructional design when he joined our program. Following study is part of his master thesis where took the initiative with my small contributions. Actually, he knows this field much better than me.
Instructional designer must identify specific objectives with meaningful teaching and learning strategies from learners' perspective. Underlying models of preceding researches do not have sufficient pedagogical components such as instructional strategy classification to describe our unit of learning. To solve this problem he considered additional elements with existing meta-model. The purpose of this study is to describe an extension for learning object meta-model specific to learning activities, to help instructional designers select strategy in various situations where they are working with existing assets.
He presented the work in English by himself in an international conference [1].

1. Masato Toyonaga, Hiroshi Nakano, Norio Iriguchi and Katsuaki Suzuki, Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET 2007), Kumamoto, Japan, July 10-13, pp.103-108 (2007)

An example of research & development related to IT support using single sign-on and portal (2006)

 Mr.Shiraki and Mr. Sugao actually are two of the graduates from 2005. Therefore this is not the introduction of a master's thesis, but the introduction of graduate thesis. I would like to introduce these cases simply because there have not been similar studies carried out as a master's degree.
Both students studied the possibilities of portal (uPortal) and single sign-on (CAS) in the area of online education. Although both applications are open-source Web applications, as long as a system which is compatible with this combination is used, once authenticated, it became possible to access the whole system without further authentication. Because of this, it became possible, as shown in the image, to bring in or make a link to a variety of systems on the portal site.
 Based on this, they developed a tool to support the learning of Java programming and a tool to record parameters of the simulation material and confirmed that it is possible to display them not only on uPortal but on Moodle and WebCT as well, in such way that they look as if they are functions integrated with the site.
After they graduated from the university, I put together their work and presented it at the CMS study meeting for them [1].

1. Y. Shiraki, T. Sugao, H. Nakano, and T. Kita, “Development of a Learning Support Tool under CAS Integrated Authentication”, the second CMS study meeting in Nagoya, Information Processing Society of Japan, 2006 (Japanese only, except abstract)

An example of research & development related to a LMS module (2005-2006)

  Mr.Matsuo, as a support module for simulation program development on Moodle, developed a module for Moodle, which can publish the Java applet as material on the Moodle by simply copying/pasting etc. the source code of the Java applet. By using this module, you can use, as an instructional material, the same Java applet material on Moodle by simply pasting the source of the Java applet on the Internet, even if you do not have Java development environment on your PC. In addition, you can also do some customization because you can edit the source online.
Although he was about to graduate, he himself presented his paper at the Educational Frontier Technical Meeting of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan [1].

1. D. Matsuo, S. Tanaka, T. Kita and Nakano, “Moodle-compatible Module to Give Support to Java Applet Production”, Educational Frontier Technical Meeting, the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan, FIE-05-33, 2006 (Japanese only, except abstract)

An example of research & development related to instructional effects of on-line tests (2005)

  This study is an important work declaring effectiveness of online tests. It therefore is introduced in spite of not a student's work. Kumamoto University implements basic courses of information technologies as required subjects of all faculties from 2002. They can be assumed as large-scale courses because there are approximately 1,800 learners respectively. They are managed by sharing the identical contents in the blended learning style. WebCT is applied as a LMS from 2003. For the confirmation of the achievement and the relearning with the item that cannot be achieved, nearly 20 on-line tests (quiz) are implemented for a year. All the tests can be taken repeatedly for a fixed period. This paper shows the instructional effect based on the statistical data of the on-line tests, based on the results of all the 13 on-line tests implemented at the course of “The Basic Course of Information Technologies B” in the second semester of 2003.
I presented this work in an international conference[1].

1. H. Nakano, N. Iriguchi, K. Sugitani, T. Kita, Y. Musashi, M. Migita, R. Matsuba, Y. Ohta, T. Gobayashi, K. Tsuji, M. Shimamoto, T. Kida, T. Usagawa, H. Akiyama: The Instructional Effects of On-line Tests on the Large-scale IT Courses, Proceeding of the 6th Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET2005), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, pp. F4B:7-11, 2005

An example of research & development related to a useful tool for promoting the use of IT materials (2002-2004)

 I supervised Mr. Hashimoto when he did his graduate study, as he was a fourth year student at the discipline of Natural Science Study in the first year I came to Kumamoto. After that, I supervised him during his two-year master's course.
 Those programs that use virtual environment, most of the time, need some very special environment in order to run. For this reason, even if the material is educationally highly effective, in many cases, it is impossible to run it unless there is a special virtual reality device. Take immersive environment, for example: when you are in a square box the size of a few cubic meters where you can have stereo vision in all directions including top, bottom, left and right (for example, TEELeX etc), you can feel as if you are in a space or microscopic space. However, in that case you cannot operate the keyboard etc. Therefore, in such a VR environment, people often use a mechanism where you wear a special glove so that your hand is displayed in the virtual environment. When you move your hand, the hand in the virtual environment also moves the same way you move your hand. In this way, you can operate buttons and switches created in the virtual space indirectly through your hand movement.
 However, it is utterly impossible to do such a thing with an ordinary PC. To solve this problem, Mr. Hashimoto developed a system to replace this special glove with mouse movement (a sort of device emulator). In addition, making use of the USB camera driver developed by Mr. Orita as mentioned above, he extended his development in such a way that the location of the hand is worked out from the information given by two USB cameras so that the hand can be displayed in the virtual space.
Participating remotely though a video link, he presented the results of his work in English by himself in an international conference, when he was in the first year of his master's course [1]. In this presentation he used a demonstration movie [2].

1. A. Hashimoto, H. Nakano, S. Osawa, S. Orita, H. Akiyama, "Development of a Hand Device Emulation System for Realizing a Virtual Environment on a Personal Computer by it3d and Java3D", 2nd International Conference on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies and Applications and the 4th Conference on Virtual University (ICETA2003), Sept., 11-13, Kosice, Slovakia (2003).
2. A demonstration movie in the format of Flash Video, MPEG, QiuickTime, MPEG4.

An example of research & development related to simulation material (2002-2003)

 Mr.Orita was one of my last students when I was at Nagoya University, whom I feel sorry for because I, his supervisor, moved to Kumamoto University in June just after he started the first year of his master's study. Although I went to Nagoya to give lectures during the first year of the master's course, at the beginning of the second year of his master's course, he had to move to Kumamoto to study, staying a little less than one year in Kumamoto. As his original interest was in the area of virtual reality (VR), he began to develop simulation programs immediately after he started his first year. By the end of his first year, he had developed a simulation program in relation to the tail of a comet in Java applet using Java 3D, which he presented at a conference when he was in the second year of the master's course [1]. In the second year of his master's course, he developed a videoconference system with stereovision using two USB cameras [2].

1. S. Orita, H. Nakano, K. Tokunaga and Y. Nakamura, “Simulation of the Tail of a Comet Using Java 3D”, 2003 PC Conference Collection of Papers (Kagoshima University), 2003 (Japanese only)
2. Shinichi Orita, “Development of Video Conference System Using Multiple 3D Images in a Virtual Space”, summary of master's thesis, majored in Graduate School of Human Informatics (reorganized to Graduate School of Information Science since 2005), Nagoya University, March 2004 (Japanese only)

 Currently, I have not made research works I have supervised in the past publicly available. The reason for this is that firstly I am not confident enough to publicize them, and secondly I am too busy to check them to see if they can be made publicly available. Lastly, please note that many of the examples I introduced here should be considered better than average.