News

The following is a brief summary of DAY 3 of the Real Session held on September 19th (Mon/*Holiday), 2022.

• ■Objectives for DAY 3
• ●Be able to apply what you learned when conducting a lecture for microteaching sessions.
• ●Be able to envision your career path and organize your daily activities and future prospects.

■DAY 3 Schedule

• [Microteaching Session: Final] (9:15–12:00)
• Participants conducted refined lectures for the microteaching session. They delivered lectures one by one, just like the first trial on DAY 1, but this time the lectures were given to the whole participants instead of groups.
• STEP 1: A participant conducts a lecture as a lecturer. (6 min)
• STEP 2: The lecturer-participant receives feedback from the instructors while the other participants fill in the feedback sheets.
• STEP 3: Whole participants exchange feedback.

• [Reflection] (13:00–16:35)
• Participants were divided into two groups according to their needs and respectively created a chart: a TP chart (Instructor: Dr. Kurita) or a SAP chart (Instructor: Dr. Park). The objectives of this activity were to reflect on their teaching/research activities and to make use of such reflection in improving their future classes and clarifying their career paths.

• [Reflection on the Entire Session] (16:35–16:45)
• Participants reflected on the entire session and individually organized what they had learned and their thoughts.

• [Award of Certificate of Completion] (16:45–17:00)
• Participants handed certificates of completion to each other.

• ■Participants’ Reactions
• Nine participants answered our questionnaire after the session. Regarding the question on the satisfaction of the whole event (i.e., a five-point scale question with “5: Extremely satisfied” and “1: Extremely dissatisfied”), eight people (88.9%) rated “5” (the highest), and one (11.1%) rated “4.” Furthermore, all nine participants (100%) rated “5” (the highest) to the question asking whether participation in the event would be useful to their future (“5: Strongly agree” and “1: Strongly disagree”).

Here are some of the feedback we received in the comment section (*Please note that we partly extracted the feedback to anonymize the respondents.):

●What did you find good about this event?

“That I could learn in person from Kurita-san and other educators. That I could feel the passion of every participant which inspired me. That I could learn with people of different fields. That I received thorough feedback on my 6-min lecture. I think the event was filled with the essence of face-to-face format which could not be achieved online.”

“That I could learn with people with diverse backgrounds, such as those who have teaching experiences, teachers at different types of school from elementary school to university, and graduate students. Every participant was able to make use of their wisdom based on experience in giving feedback on lectures during the microteaching sessions and activities during the classes.”

“That the face-to-face Real Session allowed us to learn, ask questions, and speak in a tense but relaxed atmosphere. That I could experience specific activities that helped me deepen my understanding of ‘Interactive Teaching’ and apply it to practice.”

●Other remarks and comments

“It gave me an opportunity to realize what I’d like to try and learn next. I’ll be sure to apply my precious learning experience here to my own classes so that I can return the fruits to learners and society. I deeply appreciate it that the event was open to those who are not affiliated with university.”

“It was such a rich and fulfiling event that I wonder if it was really a free event. I’ll keep learning, and taking the possibility of becoming an instructor of a course into consideration, I’ll keep refining my lectures and syllabuses, too. I’d like to recommend the Coursera course to my close friends and instructors so that the next Real Session venue will be full of participants.”

“Reflecting on what I learned in Interactive Teaching remotivated me to connect the knowledge to practice. There were a lot of things that can ‘only be done here’ in the Real Session. The event, including the experience of failure and comments to that, has become an unforgettable memory.”

“Thank you for the three-day session. I put my brain into full gear over the last three days.”

We are pleased that we received high ratings from all the respondents in various aspects. They also provided us with a lot of comments on the points that need improvement and requests for topics to be focused on in the future. We are eager to develop new events based on the opinions we received. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the people who provided us with feedback.

• ■What’s Next?
• The event was the first Real Session to be held after the release of the Coursera course “Interactive Teaching.” The responses to our questionnaire show that many of the participants learned a lot from the Real Session. On the other hand, there were also many comments on the points that need improvement and requests for topics to be focused on in the future. We are eager to develop/run events based on the feedback. We are planning to hold similar events irregularly and are also considering the development of events conducted in English to expand the participant base. Details are to be announced. We look forward to your participation.

• ■References
• Coursera “Interactive Teaching” https://www.coursera.org/learn/interactive-teaching
• UTokyo OCW “Teaching Development in Higher Education” (The University of Tokyo Future Faculty Program) https://ocw.u-tokyo.ac.jp/course_11441/

• Click here for the details of DAY 1.
• Click here for the details of DAY 2.

Airi Kawakami (Project Academic Specialist in charge of “Interactive Teaching”)