ラブ・パターソン (東洋大学)
箱根かおり (Chiyoda International School Tokyo)
2回のセッション共に、ラブ・パターソン氏と箱根かおり氏が担当した。2人共、日本国内外で25年以上の教育指導経験を持ち、教育においてテクノロジーを駆使することを専門としており、数々の賞を受賞している教育者である。SIIEJ2020での目的は、現在の日本の大学における教育の一部が国際的な水準からかけ離れており、留学生などの学習者にとって魅力的なものとは映らないことを検証することにあった。このセッションは繰り返し行われたため、以下の説明は両日ともに適用される。1回目は約25名、2回目は約30名が参加した。
このセッションでは、まずラブ・パターソン氏がコロナ禍における日本の教育の現状についての記事をいくつか取り上げたことから始まった。最新のプレゼンテーション理論が推奨するように、これらの記事やこのセッションで紹介される全てのリンクはGoogle Docsを使って参加者に共有され、それにより参加者は発表内容に集中することができた。紹介された記事には新しくできたオンライン授業に対する学生の満足度の低さ、オンライン授業の経験不足による教員のオンラインプラットフォームへの移行の難しさ、過労死と認定される以上の教員のオーバーワークなどの話題が取り上げられていた。
次にラブ氏は日本の大学で今でも行われているやや時代遅れの習慣に焦点を当てた。例えば、学生は印刷した論文のコピーを教授に渡さなければならず、数週間後には教授のドアに吊るされたバッグを確認して自分が書いた論文を受け取らなければならないなどである。さらに次に、日本の教育現場では、他のOECD諸国と比較して、教育現場でのテクノロジーの利用率が比較的低いことを検証した。実際に、2009年から2018年の間に家庭や教室でのコンピュータ使用率が低下した国は日本だけで、他の国では中程度から大幅に増加したと報告された。
これを受けて、ラブ氏はセッションの教育学的側面を紹介した。ここでは、TPACK理論(Mishra&Kohler) が紹介され、コンテンツ、教育法、テクノロジーが正しく使用された場合、教育のスイートスポットになるように調和されることが示された。次に、SAMRモデル（教育の意思決定者が時間、お金、エネルギーを投資して導入する価値があるかどうかを判断するための分析フレームワーク）が説明された。このフレームワークを使用している教育機関があるかとの質問には、「はい」と答えた参加者はいなかった。次は、「アプリ・スマッシュ」の紹介で、あるアプリでできないことを別のアプリを使って可能にし、完成させることがこれにあたる。例えば、あるアプリでマルチメディア作成を開始し、完成したコンテンツを別のアプリにエクスポートして、新しいアプリを使って何か別のことをして、成果物完成させるというもの。香港の小学校での事例と比較し、日本の中学校ではアプリやデバイスの管理が非常に厳しくコントロールされている状況との対比が見られた。
以下のマルチメディア講義の部分は、ラブ氏の大学1年生（外国人留学生、帰国子女、日本人とのハーフ）が以前に作ったビデオで、日本での教育で何が欠けているのか、彼らが見たいと思っているものを紹介した。最後に、Rabは、彼の大学のビジネス英語コミュニケーションの授業で学生が行ったマルチメディア作品の例を、東洋大学で紹介した。これらのコースでは、東京の小さなNPO（セイボー・ジャパン – https://www.seibojapan.or.jp/about/?la=en）のマーケティングプランに学生を積極的に参加させ、マラウイのビーハイブ・プロジェクト（https://www.beehivemw.org/about.html）について、乾いた理論的なビジネス英語の授業ではなく、国際的なビジネス感覚で英語を使う実世界の経験をさせた。学生たちは、マラウイの学校給食プログラムのための資金調達のために、セイボーが日本でコーヒーをより多く販売するためのマーケティングプランを作成しなければならなかった。生徒たちのビジネスアイデア、プレゼンテーションのスライドショー、パンフレット、インフォグラフィック、記事などが掲載されているウェブサイトの例は、こちらに掲載されている。
https://sites.google.com/view/toyohelpinghands/main
https://sites.google.com/view/travelers-malawi
https://sites.google.com/view/avaconsultant/home
https://sites.google.com/view/youthap/%E3%83%9B%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0
https://astercrys.wixsite.com/dzuffee
東洋大学でのこのような授業の研究と指導経験から、留学生はこのような授業が実社会での学習に非常に有益であり、彼らが英語で受講を許可されている「通常」の講義や日本語の授業よりも魅力的だと感じていたという。また、日本の大学に不足しているSNSアプリがラブの授業で使われているのを見て新鮮だと言っていた。次にかおり氏のパートに移る。
かおり氏は、日本語の授業が初級者に向けてのコースであったとしても、文法・翻訳の方法を教える授業だけである必要はなく、本を読ませる度に文学の解説文を書かせるだけではないことを伝え、インターナショナルスクールで日本語を教えた経験を生かして創設した「ブックトレーラー・コンテスト」を紹介した。ここでは、中高生たちは日本語で本を読み（学習者のレベルに合わせて高校生が児童書を読むことも可能）、映画の予告編のようなスタイルでマルチメディアを駆使して、「本の予告編」を作る。学習者は本を分析するだけでなく、批判的な思考力も求められ、受賞作品は一般公開されるため著作権に気をつける上に、健康的な競争で切磋琢磨しながら、本を読み込み、テクノロジーを駆使するようになる。このコンテストは10年前から開催されており、学生や先生方からも好評を得ている。参加者にたくさんのビデオの例を見せながら、ブックトレーラーの作成には日本語が得意である必要はないことを説明して、さらにプロが作成した映画の予告編との比較もした。コンテストのサイトとビデオへのリンクを共有のGoogle Docに共有した。以下はその一部である。
Book Trailer Contest Website
Book Trailer Contest YouTube Channel
Award Winning Book Trailer Examples
2015 Kaachan Toriatsukai Setsumeisho
最後にかおり氏は、日本語の授業で「世界が100人の村だったら」を使って、実社会の内容を授業に取り入れ、さらに学習を実際のキャンペーンのデザインにまで発展させた例を紹介した。また、これに対する学習者の反応についても触れた。その学習者たちは皆、日本の大学に必要なタイプの高校生である。この時点で、ラブ氏とかおり氏は、日本の大学に入学して1年目で辞めて海外の大学に進学した留学生（外国人、帰国子女、ハーフ）を個人的にかなりの数知っていることを述べた。これで正式なセッションは終了し、フリーディスカッション/質疑応答の時間となった。木曜日は比較的活発な議論が行われたが、金曜日はやや消極的な議論となった。
Rab Paterson (Toyo University)
Kaori Hakone (Chiyoda International School Tokyo)
Comments from
These two repeated sessions were delivered by Rab Paterson and Kaori Hakone. Both of them are award winning educators with over 25 years of international and Japanese teaching experience teaching each, and both specialising in educational technology usage in and outside of the classroom. Their aim at SIIEJ 2020 was to examine the ways in which some of the current educational practices at Japanese universities are behind international standards and therefore less attractive to learners such as overseas students. As these sessions were repeated sessions the description below applies to both days, and day 1 had around 25 attendees, day 2 just over 30.
Initially the session started by Rab Paterson looking at a few recent Japanese newspaper stories about the current state of education in Japan as a result of the changes forced onto educational establishments by the COVID 19 virus. Following current best practices in presentations theory links to these stories and the other issues covered were all shared with attendees via a Google Doc so note taking was not really necessary, thereby enabling attendees to focus more on the content of the presentation. These linked stories covered topical issues such as the low rates of student satisfaction with the newly minted online classes, teaching staff’s difficulties with moving classes to online platforms due to lack of experience with online teaching, and the overwork beyond kaoroshi of teaching staff.
In the next part of the session Rab then highlighted some of the antiquated educational practices still used by some well known universities in Japan – for example requiring students to hand in printed copies of papers to professors, and to collect them weeks later by checking a bag hanging on professors’ doors to see if their paper is inside! Following on from this the session examined the comparatively low rates of edtech usage in educational establishments in Japan when compared to other OECD nations. Indeed in one area, that of computer usage at home and in the classroom between 2009 and 2018, Japan was the only nation reporting a drop in usage while all the other nations reported a moderate to a large increase.
This led Rab to the pedagogical aspects of the session. Here the audience were shown the TPACK theory (Mishra and Kohler) on how Content, Pedagogy and Technology should all blend together into an educational sweet spot when used correctly. Next the SAMR model (an analytical framework for helping educational decision makers to decide if edtech apps and educational approaches were worth investing time, money and energy into adopting) was explained. When the audience were asked if any of their institutions were using this framework none of them answered yes. Next up was app smashing, the way limitations of apps can be overcome by blending apps together – starting multimedia work in one app and exporting the finished content into another app to do something else with the first app’s creation. Examples of this in use at elementary schools in Hong Kong, and contrasted with the situation at junior high schools in Japan where apps and devices are very strictly controlled and locked down.
This multimedia lecture part of the presentation ended with a video previously made by Rab’s university freshman students (international, returnee Japanese, half Japanese, and Japanese) showing what was missing from their education in Japan that they wanted to see. Rab then showed examples of the multimedia work done by his students in his university Business English Communication classes at toyo university. These courses actively involved his students in the marketing plans of a small NPO in Tokyo (Seibo Japan – https://www.seibojapan.or.jp/about/?la=en) about the Beehive project in Malawi https://www.beehivemw.org/about.html) to give them real world experience using English in an international business sense, rather than just dry theoretical Business English classes. Students had to develop a marketing plan to help Seibo sell more coffee in Japan to raise funding for their school feeding programs in Malawi so the project work was for a good cause. Some examples of the students websites which host their business ideas, presentation slideshows, brochures, infographics and articles are here:
https://sites.google.com/view/toyohelpinghands/main
https://sites.google.com/view/travelers-malawi
https://sites.google.com/view/avaconsultant/home
https://sites.google.com/view/youthap/%E3%83%9B%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0
https://astercrys.wixsite.com/dzuffee
Overall from his research and teaching experiences with these types of classes at Toyo, international students had found these classes very beneficial to their real world learning and more engaging than the few ‘normal’ content classes available to them in English, and their Japanese language classes. They also mentioned it was refreshing to see SNS apps being used in class as this is another lacking area at Japanese universities. This led to Kaori’s part of the session.
Kaori started by showing how Japanese language classes (even for beginner level students) did not have to be boring grammar / translation method classes, nor forcing e-generations to write literary analysis everytime they read a book. Using examples of her work in teaching Japanese at international schools she highlighted the Book Trailer Contest she founded. Here middle and high school students are not only required to read a book in Japanese (even reading children’s books are acceptable as long as it is challenging to the learners) and make a multimedia advertisement for the book in the style of a movie trailer. The students are required to not only analyse the book but also use critical thinking to make decisions as there is no one right answer to create a good book trailer. Award winning trailers will be made available to the public. Therefore, the students will be very careful about copyright and citations. The e-generations enjoy healthy competition, they read the book thoroughly and they are eager to create their world of the book using technology. The contest has been running for the last ten years and it is still well accepted by students and teachers. She showed lots of video examples to the attendees and explained that you do not have to be techy or good at Japanese to create a book trailer. Links to the contest site, and videos on the same shared Google Doc are as follows:
Book Trailer Contest Website
Book Trailer Contest YouTube Channel
Award Winning Book Trailer Examples
2015 Kaachan Toriatsukai Setsumeisho
Next Kaori mentioned how she used ‘If the world were a village of 100 people’ in Japanese language classes to bring in real world content. She also covered her students’ reactions to this and how she supported them to design a campaign to raise awareness of the topic to the entire school. These students were all international students of the type that Japanese universities need to attract and keep. At this point both Rab and Kaori mentioned that they personally knew of quite a few international type students (international, returnee Japanese, and half Japanese) who had started university in japan and quit in their first year to go to an overseas university. This ended the formal part of the session and led to the free discussion / q and a part, where a relatively lively discussion was held on Thursday but a bit more muted on the Friday.
Feedback / Areas for improvement
1 – Overall 24 people answered the survey (as of Monday 7) out of around 55 attendees and the overall feedback was very good. But there was one really rude person who gave really bad feedback (I guess they were so old fashioned they didn’t understand anything we did in the session) and also didn’t use their real email address in the survey, nor did they give English feedback (ironic when it was an international / English session). Anyway one of their valid complaints was that our session had no abstract and just said TBC. However, I sent in an abstract of our talk to Prof Ashizawa and some of the committee months ago but for some reason it never ended up on our schedule listing. And I didn’t see any way to add it once I noticed after the rude person complained. Maybe Manaba didn’t connect with the online schedule?
2 – Manaba – this is a really cumbersome CMS/LMC and most international teachers and students do not like using it. It is a ‘walled garden’ so to speak in that students have to go out of their way online to find it and it takes multiple page navigation steps to get to where they need to be to post / find information. Posting info etc online via apps that staff and students regularly use like SNS would see a bigger uptake in usage – indeed this is a point I mentioned in the session as my students have mentioned this to me multiple times.
3 – for some reason a lot of the messages from the organising team went into my spam folder and I missed them until my monthly spam check. Hearing this, the other workshop facilitator also checked the spam folder and found some emails. This is an area where maybe a different system could be used – i.e. email ask for a reply within a set time and if none are made, maybe a text message or call could be used to follow up? Or some other system?
4 – video upload links. This is another weakness of Manaba – the upload limits were ludicrously small (50Mbs) for 80 minute video recorded sessions. Using Google Drive from the start (which I ended up using to share the videos anyway) would have made more sense.
5 – Registration instruction was not clear. Screenshot with arrows pointing what exactly we need to do as workshop facilitators would be greatly appreciated.
6 – Password change. Once it is done, the owner of the account should be able to update the password by using the email.