ABE Maiku

The “GIGA School Initiative,” announced in December 2019, is a Japanese government program to enhance the digital learning environment in schools. It focuses on providing each student with a personal device and improving internet connectivity to support modern, technology-driven education. Considering this initiative, we have initiated a research program focusing on training language professionals with high digital competency. Since FY2022, we have developed and validated an initial instruction curriculum for English and Japanese through collaboration with the municipal government and local communities. We aim to address educational challenges in a global and multicultural society. In FY2024, the project’s third year, we intend to concentrate on two primary areas: 1) enhancing students’ digital literacy and 2) fortifying regional collaboration. Through these endeavors, we aspire to promote further the training of language teachers with advanced digital competencies and contribute to addressing educational challenges in a global and multicultural context.

In this study, we design digital teaching materials in the basic courses “Information Society Seminar” and “Introduction to Well-Being” in the Department of Information Society Studies. Using Moodle, this study not only focuses on the development of information technology but also presents one possibility for training humanitiesbased DX (Digital Transformation) personnel by solving social issues through technology to improve well-being. In the “Information Society Seminar,” in addition to the traditional study skills using paper and pencil, we decided to provide students with opportunities to learn basic skills using digital materials such as metaverse and smart pen as well as pictogram production, prototyping, and the use of maps, which are necessary for the information society. In the “Introduction to Well-Being,” we constructed lessons that use technology to address a variety of social issues such as medical care, food, disaster prevention politics and work styles.

Since incorporation, institutions of higher education have been urged to make decisions based on evidence rather than convention. One of these trends is the strengthening of the institute research (IR) function at each institution. However, it has been more than 10 years since the strengthening of the IR function attracted attention, almost no organization has seen an explicit organizational culture change. Insuch a situation, the phenomenal progress of digital technology has led to high expectations for DX (DigitalTransformation). In this paper, we will reexamine the essence of DX and present the vision of our DX/IR Promotion Office to realize a gradual transformation from a "conventional work style" to a "work style that is optimized to achieve business objectives". In addition, we will describe the proposed policy for materialization of the vision, based on the dialogue with the front-line level faculty and staff.

The Faculty of Intercultural Studies at Yamaguchi Prefectural University focuses on the Teacher Training of Japanese and English Languages, featuring a curriculum that utilizes collaboration (units) between teaching and nonteaching subjects. This research was funded by the Yamaguchi Prefectural University Grant, as part of the project titled “Development and Verification of the Curriculum for Basic Instruction of English and Japanese through Collaboration of Administration, Schools and Local Communities Aimed at Solving Educational Issues in a Global and Multicultural Society”.This paper reports on the progress of the “Tego-project” by students of the teacher training program for Japanese and English Languages in 2023 and discusses the prospects for human resource development in the language education profession.

Today, big data can be easily obtained in our daily lives. As a result, keywords such as data science and machine learning are no longer new. Universities, private companies, and government agencies have established departments and faculties related to data science, and various educational programs are being developed. The implementation of data science education for liberal arts at regional public universities is an urgent national issue to be identified and solutions to be proposed. Yamaguchi Prefectural University started a lecture course called Introduction to Data Science for all first-year students in FY2022 with the aim of acquiring data science backgrounds. In this paper, we examine the state of data science education for students in the humanities by using data on the submission status of assignments given to students in this course in FY 2022. The results showed the possibility of visualizing the degree of difficulty that students in the humanities, who are taking data science education for the first time, experience during data analysis exercises and the degree of their positive attitude toward the assignments.