Center Director: Keiko Okawa (Professor, Graduate School of Media Design (KMD))
Activity Base Campus: Mita
Center Overview
In today's highly globalized society, there is a strong demand for individuals who possess a global perspective and can promote mutual understanding and problem-solving through communication. To this end, universities must urgently develop educational environments and programs that not only impart knowledge but also cultivate individuals with the ability to utilize that knowledge to contribute to the international community. Furthermore, in our rapidly evolving and changing information network society, individuals are required to continuously acquire skills and knowledge, making it an urgent task for universities to build a foundation that supports individual learning and growth throughout their lives.
This center will be established as a hub to realize these new university functions by utilizing ICT and learning sciences, to research attractive and emergent distance education methods, to promote their university-wide implementation, and to disseminate its results both domestically and internationally. Specifically, its research themes include the study of global and interactive educational methods in various fields; research on emergent learning support systems and emergent learning spaces to support them; and university-wide implementation, including collaboration with overseas bases. Additionally, with a view to realizing a society of full-fledged lifelong continuing education, the center will conduct research on continuous skill/career management and other themes, and build models that can sustainably contribute to the development of international talent in various fields such as IT, social sciences, languages, area studies, and economics. Furthermore, as part of its research and empirical experiments in lifelong education, it plans to proceed in collaboration with the Office of Correspondence Courses, which has its administrative office in Mita.
This research center is being established to promote the integrated development and practice of the aforementioned education-related technologies.
Keywords and Main Research Themes
Distance education, Global educational environment, ICT-based learning support, Learning sciences, e-Learning, OCW, OER, Digital content, SOI, GC
Global Studio
2010 Business Plan
In today's highly globalized society, there is a strong demand for individuals who possess a global perspective and can promote mutual understanding and problem-solving through communication.
To this end, universities must urgently develop educational environments and programs that not only impart knowledge but also cultivate individuals with the ability to utilize that knowledge to contribute to the international community. Furthermore, in our rapidly evolving and changing information network society, individuals are required to continuously acquire skills and knowledge, making it an urgent task for universities to build a foundation that supports individual learning and growth throughout their lives.
In fiscal year 2010, as a further enhancement of the lifelong education system centered on the Office of Correspondence Courses, we will conduct research and development to implement evening schooling outside the Tokyo area. In addition, we will collaborate with faculty from various departments to develop curricula, communication environments, and programs to help students acquire global communication skills, and will implement and evaluate global learning models using classes from various fields as subject matter. Furthermore, we will carry out organizational development to establish a university-wide support system and construct a training program for distance education staff. We also plan to conduct content development for mobile environments as part of our research on learning styles.
2009 Business Report
■ Implementation Details, Research Results, and Degree of Achievement Relative to the Business Plan for the Fiscal Year
We established hubs for education and communication at SFC, the Hiyoshi Independence Wing, and the Mita South Building, creating a system that allows faculty at each campus to use them. The Mita base, in particular, is designed to be used for evening schooling by the Office of Correspondence Courses.
As for our activities, using the Hiyoshi and SFC bases, we collaborated with UNESCO in July 2009 to hold a global session to share a solar eclipse with children in Asia. This not only provided a global experience for over 500 children in 12 locations across Asia but also demonstrated a form of university contribution to the community. Additionally, in the fall semester of 2009, we conducted "Asia Workshop 2009," which connected Kyoto University, Keio University, and various locations in Asia weekly. We also demonstrated models for global experiences integrated into various types of classes, such as a class on entrepreneurship education in collaboration with Malaysia and a session for appreciating and learning from theater with a university in Thailand.
Regarding base management, we established a system where the International Center at Hiyoshi, the Internet Research Lab at SFC, and the Office of Student Services at Mita can each manage their respective bases.
In addition,
Project Members
Principal Investigator
Keiko Okawa
ProfessorGraduate School of Media Design (KMD)Shinnosuke Obi
ProfessorFaculty of Science and Technology