It started with a simple little filler in "USA Today" 25 years ago. It showed a broken student desk with cobwebs on it and offered data on "average yearly absences" in Japan, Germany, and the United States. Assessing my own data, I verified that they were on point and proceeded to discuss why this was a major hurdle for our…

Due to the economic sluggishness seen in Japan over the past few decades and the shrinking inward investment market, the Japanese government has introduced educational reforms in order to foster "global human resources" able to compete with overseas talent. One key area of emphasis has been communication education with a special focus on…

In March 2020, the World Health Organization announced that the new Corona virus is a global pandemic. The World Health Organization and the public health authority of various countries are working to contain the spread of the virus through quarantine. But these crises raise the level of stress and psychological tension on individuals and society.…

Widespread school closures affected over one billion students during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The vocational education and training (VET) sector has faced particular challenges during the crisis, most notably the fact that the digital learning environments that most education institutions had to rely on during closures don't work…

The author reflects on the history of technology in education and e-learning and introduces the iNtegrating Technology for inQuiry (NTeQ) model of lesson design authored by Morrison and Lowther (2005). The NTeQ model lesson design is a new pedagogy for academic instruction in response to the growth of the Internet and technological advancements in…

This paper illustrates how lesson plans, teaching styles and assessment can be dynamically adapted on a real-time basis during an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading classroom session by using a new e-learning system named iBELLEs (interactive Blended English Language Learning Enhancement system). iBELLEs plays a crucial role in filling…

This paper examines the current stage of development of blended learning in higher education in China, South Korea and Japan, with a comparison to the city state of Singapore. It is noted that blended learning and e-learning are introduced at institutes of higher learning in these countries with varying degrees of success. A review of existing…

Transformed into a large collaborative learning environment, the Internet is comprised of information reservoirs namely, (a) online classrooms, (b) social networks, and (c) virtual reality or simulated communities, to expeditiously create, reproduce, share, and deliver information into the hands of educators and students. Most importantly, the…

This paper presents trial evaluation of a visual computer simulator in 2009-2011, which has been developed to play some roles of both instruction facility and learning tool simultaneously. And it illustrates an example of Computer Architecture education for University students and usage of e-Learning tool for Assembly Programming in order to…

Assessment surveys of students are often conducted in order to evaluate online learning activities. Most surveys measure responses to questions which are based on students' subjective impressions. The purpose of this study is to examine participants' assessments made during the transitional phase in an online learning environment which includes…

Success in open educational resources (OER) has been reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA and the Open University in the UK, among others. It is unclear, however, how valuable OER are in learning and teaching. Approaches to OER policy and sustainability are just two other key aspects that remain unresolved across the…

In traditional classes, having many questions from learners is important because these questions indicate difficult points for learners and for teachers. This paper proposes a FAQ-based e-Learning environment to support Japanese language learning that focuses on learner questions. This knowledge sharing system enables learners to interact and…

e-Learning has some restrictions on how learning performance is assessed. Online testing is usually in the form of multiple-choice questions, without any essay type of learning assessment. Major reasons for employing multiple-choice tasks in e-learning include ease of implementation and ease of managing learner's responses. To address this…

This paper presents the integration of ubiquitous computing systems into classroom settings, in order to provide basic support for classrooms and field activities. We have developed web application components using Java technology and configured a classroom with wireless network access and a web camera for our purposes. In this classroom, the…

While the use of mobile devices for language learning has sparked the interest of an increasing number of researchers in recent years (e.g., Aizawa & Kiernan, 2003; Thornton & Houser, 2005), our knowledge of learners' preferences for the mobile platform and their usage patterns remains limited. Are learners prepared to use mobile phones…