News

The following is a brief summary of DAY 3 of the Real Session held on August 20th (Tue), 2024.

• ■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.

• [TP/SAP Chart Creation] (13:00–16:35)
• Participants were divided into two groups according to their needs and respectively created a chart: a TP chart (Instructo: Kurita) or a SAP chart (Instructor: 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)
• The certificates of completion were awarded to participants.

• ■Participants’ Reactions
• Seven 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”), all the respondents (100%) rated “5” (the highest). Furthermore, again all the respondents (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?

“The limitation of the setting of the microteaching class to be a 6-minute class, rather than a 6-minute cutout of a longer class, and that the microteaching class was conducted twice. Also, the program structure allowed us to learn knowledge during the two sessions, which we could immediately apply to improve the microteaching classes. In addition, the instructors were friendly and paid close attention to detail, and everyone who participated enjoyed the great atmosphere. Thank you very much for your help.”

“That I was able to experience interactivity as a value in real classes after taking online courses. That I was able to learn with peers who have the same ambitions. That I was able to reflect on myself based on the 3Ks.”

“That I was able to deepen our understanding of class design, syllabus, rubrics, etc. by hearing directly from Dr. Kurita and interacting with my peers.”

●Other remarks and comments

“I am grateful for finding Interactive Teaching. To Dr. Kurita and everyone, I wish you all the best in your endeavors. And please bless us again with your achievements. I, too, will do my best with the words, “We can learn from our mistakes” (I was saved by these words!) in mind.” 

“I am super grateful to Dr. Kurita, the staff, my peers, the learning environment, and my lunch boxes.”

“I think it is worth the three days of time. I hope you will continue to do so. And I hope that I will help to improve education through my learning here. Thank you very much.”

“Thank you very much for this workshop! I had a precious opportunity to learn about class design and curriculum design while practicing, and it was an intense three days in which I thought about a great many things. I would like to make use of the many things I learned from Dr. Kurita in my future classes. I learned a lot from the 6-minute class. Thank you to all the staff members!”

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?
• It was the third time to hold the Real Session as an event of Coursera “Interactive Teaching.” The responses to our questionnaire show that many of the participants learned a lot from the Real Session. Although there were some inconveniences, we were able to successfully complete the event thanks to the understanding and cooperation of all those who attended. We are eager to develop/run events based on the feedback. We are going to organize various education-/FD-events, so we hope that many people will join our future events. 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”)