Updates have been infrequent, but since my last post, we have welcomed both the new academic year and the new era. Classes have also begun. The number of students enrolled in my “Introduction to Educational Foundations,” primarily for first-year students, has nearly doubled compared to last year. My classes are known for being demanding and are often avoided, but many students with a strong interest in the recent informatization of education are taking it. It may be that students who want to become teachers, work in the education industry, or conduct research on system development based on human psychology find great value in this course. I am very pleased about this. The course for upper-level undergraduates, “Educational Information Engineering,” has 10 students, which is slightly fewer than usual. However, I am happy to see students from other faculties who have been taking my classes since their first year, as they also took my “Collaborative Learning” course. It is truly gratifying that students from other faculties have such a strong interest in Educational Technology research. I hope to make this a class that will be useful for the future of many students.

Well, a lot has happened since my last post. We have also updated our laboratory members. http://mark-lab.net/?page_id=1564

1. Research Achievements

International conferences were held in late March (SITE) and April (mobile learning), where a total of five presentations were made. Additionally, two book chapters have been accepted.

• Goda, Y. and Yamada, M. (2019). Visualization of Social and Cognitive Presences for Collaborative Learning Facilitation, Proceedings of SITE 2019, 1020-1024.

This research presents a system that automatically visualizes utterances related to “social presence,” which concerns the formation of human relationships in online communication, and “cognitive presence,” which appears during communication aimed at problem-solving such as discussions. We examine how this can be utilized to support collaborative learning. We are exploring how to facilitate collaborative learning based on the results of the visualization.

• Onoue, A., Yamada, M., Shimada, A. and Taniguchi, R. (2019). The Integrated Knowledge Map for Surveying Students’ Learning, Proceedings of SITE 2019, 1092-1100.

This is a joint research project with Professor Shimada. It presents a system that visualizes the creation processes and patterns of concept maps by utilizing logs from “BR-Map,” a concept map creation tool that uses logs from the eBook viewer “BookRoll” that I presented last year.

• Nakayama, K., Yamada, M., Shimada, A., Minematsu, T., and Taniguchi, R. (2019). Learning Support System for Providing Page-wise Recommendation in e-Textbooks, Proceedings of SITE 2019, 1078-1085.

This is also a joint research project with Professor Shimada, concerning a system that recommends information related to the content of each slide in BookRoll, using characteristic words contained in the slides as keywords. Each slide in BookRoll has a recommendation button, and when pressed, links to information on the Internet related to the content of that slide are displayed.

• Taniguchi, Y., Shimada, A., Yamada, M. & Konomi, S. (2019). Recommending Highlights on Students’ E-Textbooks. Proceedings of SITE 2019, 1128-1134.

This research presents a system that recommends highlights on BookRoll that other students have made, even if the individual student has not highlighted them. This function is expected to be applied to various learning support scenarios by capturing important parts for understanding the class content, not just at the slide level, but at the wording level.

• Geng, X., and Yamada, M. (2019). Development and design of a compound verb AR learning system employing image schemas, Proceedings of the 15th international conference of mobile learning 2019, 73-80.

This research concerns an AR-based Japanese language learning support system. To help international students learn compound verbs (e.g., “torikaeru” [to exchange], “tobikomu” [to dive into]), which are difficult to understand, the system aims to help them understand these verbs through images by displaying AR related to the compound verb when they combine paper cards on which individual verbs are written.

• Yamada, M., Goda, Y., Kaneko, K., Handa, J., and Ishige, Y. (2019).Discourse Analysis Visualization Based on Community of Inquiry Framework, In K.Myint (ed.) Emerging Trends in Learning Analytics: Concepts and Applications in Education (pp.200-222), Brill publisher, Leiden, The Netherlands. https://brill.com/view/title/54675

Related to the content presented at SITE 2019, this is a study on the evaluation of a system that visualizes cognitive presence in addition to social presence. It focuses on visualization methods, system design, and evaluation.

• Okubo, F., Yamada, M., Oi, M., Shimada, A., Taniguchi, Y., Konomi, S.(2019). Learning support systems based on cohesive learning analytics, In K.Myint (ed.) Emerging Trends in Learning Analytics: Concepts and Applications in Education (pp.223-248), Brill publisher, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This provides a general overview of the Learning Analytics research conducted at Kyushu University to date. A video introducing our Learning Analytics research is currently being shown at our university’s Learning Analytics Center, but we have been doing many new things since then. It includes findings from work developed since then, such as portfolio analysis using text mining, active learner dashboards, and real-time class analysis research.

2. New Research

Fortunately, I was able to secure a new Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (General). Thank you to the reviewers. This is a four-year plan, and we will proceed with the research as a team with Professor Goda (Kumamoto University), Professor Shimada, and Professor Taniguchi (both from Kyushu University). The title is “Development and Evaluation of an Interaction Enhancement Infrastructure to Support the Iteration of Individual and Collaborative Learning.” We will design, develop, and evaluate a platform that enhances the linkage between individual learning and collaborative learning, based on educational/learning theories and Learning Analytics. I have been conducting Learning Analytics research, but I want to strengthen Learning Analytics research related to collaborative learning, and I hope to make this a great project.

In addition, research on agricultural human resource development (led by Professor Rin-ichiro Taniguchi, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A)), research on the analysis of the relationship between Self-Regulated Learning and learning behavior (Challenging Research (Exploratory)), and Learning Analytics research in high schools (SIP) have also begun in earnest. Professor Ogata’s (Kyoto University) Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) is also entering its final stages. As our research projects are progressing steadily, I hope to conduct excellent research that can contribute to the development of education together with my co-researchers.

Regarding academic societies, the Japan Society for Educational Technology (JSET) has decided to hold two national conferences per year, and I am in charge of the spring conference. While we want to take on the challenge of planning new initiatives for the society to help members improve their research and practice, there is also the issue of how to reduce the management burden of the society in recent years, and we must consider that balance. One of the reasons for the spring conference is that it was originally a JSET research meeting, and since the March meeting already had the scale of a mini-national conference in terms of the number of participants and presentations, it was developed into a national conference. It is a new challenge, and there are parts that are unpredictable, but I will do my best to make it a great conference. The first spring conference will be held from February 29 to March 1, 2020, at Shinshu University. I want to work with the committee members in charge of the spring conference and Professors Morishita and Shimada, who are managing the site, to make it a success.