It has been about a month since the JSET 2020 Autumn National Conference concluded. It was an online conference featuring only poster presentations, for which we introduced a new system, and the operation was excellent.

Although it has been a month since the autumn conference, we opened the call for papers and registration for the Spring National Conference, to be held in March 2021, on October 2nd. We were making various preparations until the very last minute, and I am grateful that we were able to open the registration thanks to the JSET executive members, the board of directors, and above all, the members of the Spring Conference Planning Committee.

https://www.jset.gr.jp/taikai38/index.html

The spring conference will consist only of oral presentations. We had hoped to celebrate the post-COVID return to in-person gatherings with all participants at the Kwansei Gakuin University Nishinomiya Uegahara Campus (a very beautiful campus!!), but following the Shinshu University conference last year and the autumn conference last month, it will be held online. Given the current situation, we simply cannot commit to an in-person event. It is unfortunate, but I hope to make it a great conference. While it was a trial last year, this time it will be an official online conference.

As in the previous year, we are calling for general research presentations based on themes aligned with SIGs, and within the general research presentations, we will also hold student sessions aimed at fostering young researchers in Educational Technology. We are also accepting applications for self-organized sessions, where members who hold public research grants such as KAKENHI can host events related to their research team’s findings. Although there is a fee for setting up a self-organized session, you can hold workshops to disseminate research results or symposia to deepen discussions on research outcomes. We encourage you to apply for these as well (please submit your application to the email address of the Spring Conference Planning Committee).

The symposium will be held under the theme “The Future of Education Transformed by Digital Transformation.” The term Digital Transformation (DX) has become common in various fields, and I believe it has been accelerating even further during this COVID-19 pandemic. In primary and secondary education, we were talking about providing one device per student and Wi-Fi under the GIGA School Program, but the spread of COVID-19 became a major catalyst for advancing DX. In higher education institutions such as universities, although it varies by region, while in-person classes have gradually resumed in the second semester, I believe many institutions are still conducting classes online in principle. However, we have learned that by fully utilizing this shift to online classes and ICT, we can do many things across various forms of instruction. For this symposium, we have invited Professor Hiroto Yasuura, Professor Emeritus and former Vice President of Kyushu University, as our keynote speaker, and he will give a lecture on the educational DX he has been promoting. Following that, we will have presentations and a panel discussion featuring Professor Morita from Waseda University, Professor Takahashi from Tokyo Gakugei University, and Professor Shirai from Osaka University. I believe this is a very timely theme. I am already looking forward to it!

General research presentations are accepted until 5:00 PM on November 27th, and self-organized sessions until November 6th (notifications of acceptance or rejection for self-organized sessions will be sent by November 13th). Please note that these deadlines are earlier than last year.

There are other differences from last year, so please check the JSET 2021 Spring National Conference website mentioned above.

We look forward to the participation of many of you.