Time flies, and the 2026 academic year has begun. Classes start this week at our university. Yamada Laboratory is making a fresh start by welcoming two new research students. One of them already holds a doctoral degree and works as a university faculty member. They have a strong passion for learning and conducting research in Educational Technology, so we decided to accept them as a research student. They have already gotten off to a great start, with a full paper accepted for ICLEA, which will be held in Kumamoto at the end of June.

The other student is from Hong Kong and holds a master’s degree. They wish to conduct research on the educational application of VR, and I look forward to seeing them do their best. It seems they had wanted to come to Japan for a long time but had not had the opportunity until now, and they were finally able to fulfill that wish. I had asked them to work on their development skills and literature reviews before arriving, so I am excited to see how things progress.

With these two new members, I am very happy that we have been able to get off to a good start. Our research seminars will also begin tomorrow. Also, I need to write some papers soon… I have addressed the conditions where possible, but the additional reviews are heavy, and I have been working hard on them with my co-authors. I hope to do my best on this as well.

Oh, and I have also updated the pages for collaborators and students.

I look forward to another productive year.