The Japan Society for Educational Technology (JSET) conference begins next weekend. This year, it will be held at the Nagasaki University Bunkyo Campus. I imagine many of you attending are already preparing.

Time flies; this is my fourth and final year serving on the Conference Planning Committee. Out of the four conferences I have been involved in as a committee member, I have organized a research session on the educational and learning use of games three times. I started this initiative because, despite it being a major field at international conferences, I felt it had not been discussed much in Japanese Educational Technology recently. From the very first session, many people participated. Looking back, I think it was because there was no place to gather people who were thinking about and challenging what more could be done with things like games, which are sometimes seen as taboo in the field of education and learning.

From the second session onward, Professor Toru Fujimoto of the University of Tokyo has cooperated as a coordinator, and Professor Toshihiro Hayashi of Kagawa University as a chair, and the sessions continue to be very successful (actually, Professor Fujimoto participated purely as a presenter during the first session).

This will be the third time for the research session on the educational and learning use of games, which I started with some uncertainty. This time, while touching slightly on the theoretical background, I would like to focus the discussion on design and evaluation based on that theoretical background. However, since we discussed the theoretical background last year, I plan to omit some of it. In that regard, for those JSET participants who will be attending the game research session, I believe that reading “Recent Trends and Future Challenges in Research on the Educational Use of Games,” which was written by Professor Fujimoto as the first author last year, will lead to better discussions and help you enjoy the session more. I have uploaded Professor Fujimoto’s manuscript, so please download and read it. You may read it in advance, or refer to it while participating in the session.

I am looking forward to the day. Thank you very much.

Toru Fujimoto & Masanori Yamada (2011) Recent Trends and Future Challenges in Research on the Educational Use of Games, Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Japan Society for Educational Technology, 181-184 Download here