Kyudai News No26 page 18/28

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Kyudai News No26

17 Kyudai News No.26 Kyushu University Library’sInnovation Center forEducational Resources (ICER)provided a JMOOC course usingvideo-based teaching materialsthat it has specially produced forthis purpose. The theme of thecourse is “Global SocialArchaeology” and it began onSeptember 25, 2014, taught byProfessor Koji Mizoguchi(President of the WorldArchaeological Congress) of theFaculty of Social and CulturalStudies. Taking advantage ofKyushu University’s status as theonly national university with aSchool of Design, the InnovationCenter for EducationalResources used their own studioto produce teaching materials inEnglish, which became the firstcourse to be offered onOpenLearning, Japan, a newdistribution platform certified byJMOOC. One of a number ofnew forms of educationalactivity, MOOCs (massive openonline courses) are beginning totake off worldwide. The JapanOpen Online EducationPromotion Council (JMOOC) wasestablished in October 2013, inresponse to the globaldevelopment of MOOCs.MOOCs have the potential totransform global education fromits very foundations, so it is vitalfor universities to respond totheir emergence.Rather than simply using theMOOC teaching materialsprovided by other universitiesand colleges, universities needto disseminate their own usefulteaching materials and improvethe education that they provide.Accordingly, it is important toensure that even facultymembers who have no previousexperience of producingvideo-based teaching materialscan produce such materials asneeded, and can use anddisseminate them. With this inmind, the Innovation Center forEducational Resources is at theheart of efforts within KyushuUniversity to put in place andenvironments that will facilitatethe production of teachingmaterials that can be used forMOOCs.The course has successfullycompleted by 799 registeredstudents from 53 countriesincluding Japan with the highestcompletion rates (27.8%) amongall other courses available onJMOOC. Also, lively onlinediscussion fostered democraticparticipation and enhancedlearning of the course.JMOOC Course Launched Using Teaching MaterialsProduced by the Innovation Center for Educational ResourcesClose Up 03