Thank you all for your support this year. I truly appreciate it.

There are only a few hours left in this year. Looking back while reading the entry I wrote at the end of last year…

Journal papers: 2 (both as first author)
Japan Society for Educational Technology short letters: 2 (co-authored)
International conferences: 5 (3 as first author)

Although the number of international conferences decreased by 4, I feel I worked hard with 2 journal papers and 2 short letters. Journal papers are very important. I have material for papers, but it is difficult to find the time to write them. I would like to write a few more papers next year. I have some currently under submission, some that I will submit soon (co-authored; almost finished?), and some currently in progress, so I want to challenge myself with these in addition to my other work. Regarding international conferences, I was happy to have my paper accepted to CollabTech, which I had been aiming for, as it is now part of the Springer Lecture Notes series. Also, I am truly happy that the two master’s students I supervised for the first time worked hard and achieved results in the form of a short letter and a full paper at an international conference.

As for other major research activities beyond Research Achievements…
My KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) was accepted, and I am proceeding with it to further develop the systems I have created so far. Since data has been accumulated to a certain extent, I would like to analyze it and turn it into research results. As this will determine the direction of the system design, I want to analyze it carefully.

The Educational Big Data research project, which has been ongoing since last year, has also developed further. Furthermore, Professor Ogata received a KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S), and although my role is minor, I was in charge of the parts related to psychological data, logs, and educational evaluation. It will continue for some time, so I am looking forward to what is to come.

As a result of the “New Learning Project,” a project promoting active learning-style classes at Fukuoka Prefectural High Schools, a short letter was accepted by the Japan Society for Educational Technology. My students and Mr. Inoue from Itoshima High School jointly designed and implemented the classes, and I am glad that the results bore fruit in the form of research. Next year, I would like to work with the Prefectural Board of Education and schools to advance initiatives that will serve as a foundation for future active learning in schools within Fukuoka Prefecture, and I hope to make it something good by engaging in the cycle of research and practice (I believe the cycle of research and practice is important).

In the game project, things also progressed well with 2 international conferences. It is an English vocabulary learning game that uses geographic information. Inspired by Ingress, I have been working with Professor Okada from the Center for Educational Material Development, Professor Kaneko from the Cyber Security Center, and Professor Gouda from Kumamoto University to see if we could integrate geographic information, spot capture/defense, the relationship between the words being learned and geographic information, and game elements. I would like to settle down a bit more with game-based learning research and work closely with my co-researchers to make it something great.

This year, I was involved in various tasks related to international conferences. For ICCE 2016 and 2017, I served as the SIG Chair for Technology Enhanced Language Learning, and for SETE 2016, which was held in conjunction with ICWL 2016, I served as a workshop organizer alongside Professor Jie Chi Yang from National Central University, a senior from the Akahori Laboratory. I was also added as an editorial member of the journal Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, published by the APSCE, which operates ICCE. I am very grateful for this. I am where I am today thanks to the opportunities given to me by my seniors and the great researchers who came before me. Thank you very much. I will do my best next year to contribute to the development of this research field.

An educational material development project for university librarians is also underway. This year, with the cooperation of Mr. Makoto Okamoto and Ms. Sachiko Kamakura of ARG, Inc., we developed public relations materials for university librarians and story-based video materials inspired by Anchored Instruction. Both have finished formative evaluations, and I am currently organizing the data. I also gave a conference presentation on a portion of the latter.

Next year, I want to work even harder to achieve research results and advance research that is useful for practice. I have a lot of data accumulated, so I have plenty of material to write papers; the rest is a battle against time. Next year, it seems that projects related to learning analytics, the resumption of multilateral CSCL projects, and industry-academia collaborations will emerge, so I want to put my heart into it and do my best.

I wish you all a happy new year.