Awareness about Open Educational Resources (OERs) and the purposes for offering and adopting OERs and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were analyzed using a detailed survey of higher education across Japan, which was conducted in 2015. A comparison with a similar study conducted in 2013 revealed that awareness of OERs has increased slightly and the number of MOOCs offered has increased significantly in the intervening two years. The increase of offerings and adoption was low for OERs but high for MOOCs. OERs are used to improve the learning environment for students, while MOOCs aim to promote lifelong learning. Only one-fifth of the institutions surveyed in 2013 offered MOOCs or advanced their plans to offer them in 2015, and institutions that did offer MOOCs or advance such plans to offer them after the previous survey tended to provide MOOCs for society and for promotional purposes, not only for themselves because Japanese institutions are self-sustainable in terms of open education activities, operating without the support of the government or foundations
This study aims to verify the effectiveness of English language material using mobile devices for businesspeople in terms of the effect on 1) motivation, 2) overall learning performance, and 3) practical performance in real business situations. We compared the use of materials developed from business English used in a sales department in a real company environment, using two cohorts of learners, one from the sales division and the other employees. The results showed that this material was effective on the enhancement of motivation in both employees. Moreover, the test scores of both cohorts in terms of overall learning performance increased after learning with this material. However, the learners engaged in sales positions recognized the effectiveness toward output activities, such as speaking, in their business more than that of non-sales personnel, as a result of the proximity of the materials to their business.
Recently, a form of "Flipped Classroom" is already generating a lot of attention. Utilizing tablet PC, open educational resources (OER) and internet, the practices introducing Flipped Classroom is spreading in an elementary and secondary education. Flipped Classroom is expected to improve student outcomes. This article explains a brief overview of Flipped Classroom and dissemination of information technology which assists its introduction. In addition, it explains the possibilities and challenges for its integration in a real-world classroom situation.
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