| 3/2(Sat), 2013 |
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Prof. Yoichi Okabe (President of the Open University of Japan)
ICT-Supported Education at OUJ
The Open University of Japan (OUJ) has been a school of distance education based mainly on broadcasting and postal mail, but we are increasingly adopting ICT innovations including the Moodle LMS. However, we realize that there are some difficulties to be overcome. These difficulties are not unique to OUJ, indeed they are likely to be common to most educational institutions in Japan, and they seem to be hindering ICT innovation in Japanese education as a whole.
In this presentation, the speaker will introduce the unique education system of OUJ, touching upon its ICT innovation efforts and difficulties. He will make clear the differences and similarities between OUJ and other universities as well as predict the future direction of regular universities, before posing some questions about ICT education in Japan.
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Dr. Michael de Raadt (Moodle Development Manager, Moodle HQ, Australia)
Incentives, Adoption and Modalities
How do I get lecturers to really USE Moodle? This is a question I have been asked a number of times. To address this question I will describe incentives needed to encourage users to use learning management systems. Based on adoption theory, I will show how users at different levels of accepting innovation can be enticed to take a step forward in their use of educational technologies. I will present the modalities of teaching and learning that emerge from this perspective and how they can be practically applied in online and blended learning.
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| 3/3(Sun), 2013 |
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Martin Dougiamas (Director, Moodle HQ, Australia)
Back to the Classroom (virtual presentation)
Moodle has become popular around the world but there are still many inefficiencies surrounding the ways it is being used. Those who use Moodle and develop Moodle are not only educators but designers and engineers, and as such we are concerned with increasing learning outcomes while reducing the effort being spent to achieve them.
Martin will talk about how Moodle HQ is focussing on three main areas of development to achieve this:
1) Moodle as a platform, with better systems for developing, distributing and maintaining plugins across installations.
2) Moodle community, including a wide range of tools for sharing ideas and content between users, both in teacher, administration and particularly research.
3) Moodle core improvements to make it a more powerful tool for research, including analytics and usability improvements as well as performance improvements. This is especially intended to improve learning research which in turn will guide future development of core and plugins.
In particular our research focus enables us to go "back to the classroom" to study what works and what doesn't, so that we can continue towards our goal of making computers become strong partners for our teachers and learners. |
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Prof. Tatsuya Shirai (Suzuka National College of Technology)
Moodle +/-5 Years
Six years have past since Moodle 1.8 was released in March, 2007. One year later, Moodle 1.9 came out, followed by Moodle 2.0 in November, 2010, which included many new and enhanced functions. In this keynote, the speaker will review major changes in Moodle functionality and its popularity in Japan over the last five years. At the same time, he will infer what changes in Moodle functionality, usability, and purposes might take place during the next five years. Our computer environment has dramatically changed from having desktop computers to carrying smart phones and tablet PCs. Moreover, Japan has a history of developing highly functional Keitai cellphones. In the meantime, Moodle has been mainly used in higher education systems such as universities. It is, however, spreading gradually among administrative offices and corporations. In elementary and secondary schools, digital textbooks and electronic blackboards will be combined with digital learning contents and put into use more and more. Learning computer programing has become obligated in junior high schools, which will open doors to more use of Moodle in secondary schools. The speaker does not have the power to foresee our future. He will thus report what he has learned from the wide-range of opinions posted on forums such as moodle.org. |
