I am still serving as an editor for the Japan Society for Educational Technology (JSET) special issue on “Learning Analytics,” but the call for papers for the next special issue has already begun. The next special issue is on Active Learning. With Professor Matsuda from Tokyo Metropolitan University as the chair, two fresh and hopeful individuals, Professor Oyama from Osaka University and Professor Fukuyama from the University of Tokyo, have been appointed as editors. That’s great!! Fresh!! (I want to say it in the style of Mimura from Summers). I will be serving as the vice-chair.
Active learning is a frequent topic of discussion in higher education institutions, and an increasing number of universities are introducing it into their classes. They are also conducting Faculty Development (FD), as is our university. Primary and secondary education institutions, especially high schools, are facing a transformation in education due to university entrance exam reforms and the new Course of Study.
However, what is the situation when viewed from the level of research? Many approaches still involve repeating practices and applying instructional designs empirically. When asked if research is being conducted in a consistent manner—from theory to instructional design or support tool design, and then to evaluation—the number of such studies in Japan is still small. I believe it is important to elevate this to a research level and advance its social implementation. Overseas, the journal Active Learning in Higher Education (Sage Publishing) was launched in the early 2000s, and it publishes not only practices but also research on system development, evaluations of active learning using existing tools, and research on evaluation methods themselves.
Active learning in higher education
(For those at Kyushu University, Yamada has a personal subscription, so you can access it from the Faculty of Arts and Science.)
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/alh
#That said, I wonder how long I can keep the subscription… The price goes up every year, and starting this fiscal year,
#I was told that maintaining the multi-site access across campuses like before would cost three times as much,
#so it is only accessible from Ito (I really don’t have the money to pay over 300,000 yen for
#a single journal…).
For the next special issue, we would like to invite submissions of consistent research from a research perspective. In particular, perspectives on theory and evaluation are important, as these are areas where institutions and teachers who are introducing (or planning to introduce) active learning—not only in higher education but also in primary and secondary education—struggle. I believe various methods such as rubrics and process evaluation methods have been discussed, but are they enabling reliable and valid evaluations? I think there are many questions, such as whether consistent evaluation from a research perspective is being achieved. I also think there is room for fundamental discussions. Including these, we welcome a variety of research papers, such as theoretical research, research on the development of evaluation methods, and research on system development.
Although the specific schedule has not yet been decided, the submission deadline is usually in early February. I think there is still time to collect and analyze data, so please consider submitting your work.
Japan Society for Educational Technology Journal Special Issue Call for Papers
Information on “Special Issue: Design, Practice, and Evaluation of Active Learning”
http://www.jset.gr.jp/news/news170626_r.html
