The results of the course evaluation survey for “Educational Information Engineering,” a specialized course in the Faculty of Education that I taught during the first semester, have been returned.

Having been in charge of Faculty Development (FD) since my previous position, I use these results as an indicator to identify issues and consider how to improve. The results from the mark sheets were returned, and I am very grateful to see that for most items, there were many 4s on the 4-point scale. My classes involve quite heavy assignments. Since the students are still undergraduates, I have them read about 20–30 pages of Japanese literature per week, check for words they don’t understand, and research them to some extent beforehand. I proceed with group work under the assumption that this has been done. For review, I have them write minute papers, and since I ask them to write their own interpretations logically, it ends up being quite a substantial amount. I believe it is a rather demanding course.

I am happy to have received such positive evaluations, and it made me think that I should continue with this approach while making a few more refinements. There were many positive comments, such as “It was very meaningful,” “The course was directly useful for my graduation thesis,” and “There were many things that will be useful for my future, and I am glad I took this course.” However, there were only eight students enrolled, and I think the fact that highly motivated students gathered was a major factor. I feel that perhaps I would not have received such high evaluations if it weren’t for them. They were truly excellent students. Somehow, ever since my time in Kanazawa, the students who come to take my classes often seem to be aiming high, have high intellectual curiosity, and possess their own learning goals and future objectives to some extent. I still see students who took my classes in Kanazawa on social media, and I am very happy to see them working hard toward self-actualization. The students who took Educational Information Engineering are also working hard. Since they are all third and fourth-year students, I will not be able to supervise their graduation research, but I will be able to see their final presentations, so I am looking forward to that in about a year.

Regarding next year, I adopted the (semi-)jigsaw method for almost every class session, and I still believe this course design is effective. I thought it could be made a bit more compact, and I decided to set the pre-class assignments more clearly. Also, two issues were pointed out. Some students gave a low rating to the item “Does the instructor match the pace and level of understanding of the students?” so for a small group like this, I thought it might be good to include even a short session to confirm knowledge retention. Also, there was a request to finish on time (laughs). I apologize; I ran over time in almost every session. While it was because the discussions were lively and I enjoyed them too, as I mentioned above, I must strictly cut them off on time and make them more compact. There are only 90 minutes, after all. Furthermore, I believe the students are capable of reading English literature if it is a textbook or a practical research paper used in Western Educational Technology, so I intend to incorporate English literature as well.

I will strive to make it an even better course next year.