To put it simply, active learning refers to not simply having students “listen” to a lecture, but rather engaging them in some “activity” such as writing, speaking, or presenting. These can be called “output” activities where the students write, speak, and present what they think about, or their understanding of, a given question or topic.

The measure of a good class is not what was taught, but rather what students learned. No matter how well the lesson is prepared, how loudly the teacher speaks, or what kinds of ICT and other tools are used, it is not a “good class” when the results fall short in terms of what the students learn. A class is thought good only when the students’ learning results meet learning goals the teacher sets.

Yes. Using active learning is important in order to make students’ learning active and to deepen their learning, but that does not negate the importance of lectures. There are many merits to lectures in that teachers can convey a great quantity of information to students in a short amount of time, and excellent lecturer can create a strong pull for students and contribute to better learning achievement. However, lectures are a “listening (input)” activity, and they do not lend themselves to having the students sort out their own understanding and thoughts, debate them with others, and thereby deepen their learning. What is needed is the promotion of “active learning-style class” that balances lectures with active learning.

At the Science Council of Japan, generic skills are explained as “skills that can be acquired through subject-specific intellectual training, but that enable one to do something that has a general or generic utility without depending on subject-specific knowledge or understanding.” Although they are referred to as “generic skills,” the specific substance of those skills will in fact differ by academic field. For example, the specific “communication skills” required from a lawyer will differ from those required from a nurse.
Also, looking at the results of employer surveys, the demand for specialized knowledge tends to be much higher on students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) than those in humanities and social sciences. Even though generic skills have come to be regarded as important, there appears to be no change in the importance of specialized knowledge in STEM.

The diploma policy is a policy regarding the conferment of degrees, and as such it should be determined for each degree. However, there are a number of cases where, although a faculty offers just one degree, the curriculum (course tree) and entrance examination may differ from one department to the next within that faculty. In such cases, there cannot be just one curriculum policy or admission policy for the faculty. For example, in the Kyoto University Faculty of Agriculture, while there is one diploma policy for the entire faculty, they have taken a two-tiered approach to the curriculum policy and admissions policy, incorporating some elements that are common to the faculty as a whole and other elements that differ by department. Meanwhile, there are cases like Osaka University where they have multiple degree programs within a single faculty and so the three policies are set by each degree program.

If we follow this stipulation, a two-credit, semester-long course requires 90 hours of study, so if the semester is 15 weeks long, then it must entail 6 hours of study each week. Even if we convert a one class period into 2 hours, that means 4 hours of study outside of the classroom. Certainly, there are very few students in Japan who study that much. Various solutions are being proposed to substantiate the credit system—including the use of the cap system, the mandatory 15 classes per semester, and so on—but as long as there is no change in students’ learning behavior in terms of trying to front-load credits as much as possible for the purpose of job hunting, which usually starts in the 2nd semester of the junior year, it will be difficult to find a fundamental solution. To start with, is time an appropriate measure of learning? Owing to the diffusion of e-learning, the idea has also emerged that learning can be measured through learning outcomes rather than time.

To run your flipped classroom, generally, lecture videos are offered for your students to view at home before your class. The following procedures can be available to produce lecture videos:
·Use presentation software such as PowerPoint to record your audio narration and save it as a video file.
·Use a video camera to film your lecture in advance in your office or classroom.
·Use lecture videos made publicly available by university instructors and universities both within and outside Japan through OCW or educational video sharing services such as other universities’ OCW and iTunes U.
You can ascertain students’ prerequisite knowledge for your flipped class by conducting a quiz or group discussion on the content of the lecture video at the start of a face-to-face class.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) refers to an educational environment in which each student brings their own laptop PCs or mobile devices to campus for use for their learning both in and out of class. Such an environment assumes that mobile devices including laptop PCs will be used in your class.

Students can use the mobile devices they bring in class to take notes, access LMS, and browse online research journals and articles related to class content. In addition to uses in class, there are wider possibilities for self-study and collaborative learning in groups, such as preparing for class and working on assignments between classes in “learning commons” including self-study areas and other learning spaces.

Yes, most Learning Management Systems (LMS) allow you to use class-specific mailing lists.
At Kyoto University, mailing lists can be used within the PandA (LMS). A user manual is available on the IIMC website.

A. It would be possible to assess degrees of knowledge retention, but it is questionable whether or not it is possible to evaluate social skills, humanities, and other diverse capabilities. We have no choice but to acknowledge that it is impossible to evaluate (in a substantive sense) all kinds of capabilities, and on that basis try to work out what kinds of evaluation standards are needed in order to promote the learning activities of students.
　It is also crucial to understand that making evaluation standards clearer can also have adverse effects. Clarification has the potential to render other matters less visible. We need to distinguish clearly between the things that we would like to know but which cannot be fully captured through evaluation, those that we can capture, and those that we must capture. For this reason also, rather than being fixated on evaluation, we should make the observation of students the major premise of assessment.

The more rigorous the assessment of learning is, the more effective it will be. However, managing multiple courses simultaneously and teaching classes demands a great deal of time, leaving limited time to invest in learning assessment. Try to implement assessments at specific points such as at the start of classes and midway through the teaching period, in line with the types of classes you are teaching.
　Using ICT is extremely effective and efficient also in terms of reducing the burden of learning assessment. We understand that some instructors are not as adept as others. But, once having created templates, you can use them over and over again, dramatically cutting the time spent on tasks such as distribution, collection, data entry, and analysis, as well as having many other benefits such as reducing the use of resources and maintaining the environment of the research lab. We hope that you will enlist the assistance of a colleague well-versed in ICT and give the use of ICT tools a try.

The advancement of active learning has brought about new problems not encountered in conventional forms of assessment. For example, care must be taken when assessing students in group work and the like, where groups comprise a mixture of both non-participating students and students exercising leadership and participating actively.
　Strategies that can be employed in such cases include managing the group work in a way to prevent variations between individual students from arising, setting out the evaluation standards and criteria clearly in advance, combining self-evaluation and peer evaluation by students within the same group, allocating roles clearly and offering incentives, and setting tasks that bring differences in students’ learning efforts to light, such as having students give presentations collaboratively but submit written reports individually.