News FY 2016 and before

Delegation from Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Ministry of Education and Training and other educational institutions

On March 28th 2017, led by Chairwoman, Ms. Le Thi Thanh Thu and Vice Rector, Mr. Vu Huu Đuc of the Ho Chi Minh City Open University, the delegation composed of thirty members in total from the said university, Ministry of Education and Training including other educational institutions visited OUJ to deepen mutual understanding and to explore future cooperation.

President Okabe, Vice President Koterayama, Vice President Kisugi, Chair of the International Affairs Committee, Prof. Aoki and staffs of International Affairs Section welcomed the delegation.

After the formal greetings between the two institutions, Vice President Koterayama made a presentation introducing OUJ to the delegates, followed by so many questions from the audience.

Following the introduction of the Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Prof. Aoki introduced online lectures to the delegates which also derived lots of questions from Vietnam side.

In a friendly atmosphere, the delegation left OUJ.

We sincerely hope that this will lead to a good opportunity to build relationship between the two universities.

ICDE President's Summit 2016

Hosted by Charles Sturt University, the ICDE(International Council for Distance and Open Education) President's Summit was held at Cronulla Beach near Sydney, Australia, from 20- 23 November 2016 with the theme of "A Era New Era of Leadership & Quality, The Business of Open & Distance Learning 2020".

Among 115 delegates from over 32 countries, President Yoichi Okabe and Professor Mitsumasa Okada, Director of Center for Open Distance Education (CODE) attended the conference to share the experience and ideas.

President Okabe presented his poster at the Learning Analytics Market Place with the title, "Learning Analytics for Regular Online Courses, MOOCs and Classroom Teaching at OUJ" on the second day.

The 2017 ICDE Presidents' Summit will be hosted by LORIA at Université de Lorraine, 22-23 May 2017 at Nancy, France.

For more information, see

http://www.icde.org/新規タブで開く

OUJ partners with National Open University (Taiwan)

The OUJ has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Open University (NOU). Since 1993, the two universities has cooperated in various activities such as faculty exchange programs and sharing of educational publications. The renewed relationship is expected to strengthen our ties further.

The ceremony for signing the MoU was held during the NOU's annual International Conference on Distance Education (30 October to 2 November 2017) together with the 30th anniversary of the establishment of NOU. NOU President Sung Po and OUJ Vice President Wataru Koterayama signed the agreement.

Professor Koterayama gave a keynote speech at the International Conference with the title "Mobile Era of Distance Education". He spoke about the current issues of OUJ, such as how we provide PC skill training for the senior generation students with the expanding numbers of the online lectures, and how we recruit young students under the circumstance of the declining birth rate. He also reported the senior student's activities at the study centers that are located nationwide.

Established in 1986, NOU is the first open distance learning institution in Taiwan. OUJ and NOU have many aspects in common, the main mission is to provide higher education to adults and both universities has the characteristics of the open access that allows anybody who wants to enroll without any entrance selection.

With signing of the MoU as a turning point, it is hoped that both universities could strengthen their relationship and communication in exploring more cooperation opportunities in the future.

The 30th AAOU Annual Conference

The 30th AAOU annual conference was held at Crowne Plaza Manila Galleria from 26th to 29th October 2016, hosted by University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU). The theme of the conference was "Open Education in Asia: Changing Perspectives''.

Nearly 500 participants in Asia attended this conference.

From OUJ, President Yoichi Okabe as a member of the Executive Committee, Professor Tomotsugu Kondo (Informatics) and Associate Professor Junji Shibasaki (Informatics) as a speaker respectively and Professor Tsuneo Yamada as a steering committee member of the Asian MOOCs Project, attended this conference.

The paper entitled ''How non-professionals can create a broadcast-quality e-learning course" was presented by Professor Kondo at the parallel session. The presentation introduced the necessary skills in creating high-quality e-learning courses, mentioning about his past experiences on producing full online courses under the difficult circumstances of the limited funds and staffs, and the speech appealed to the audience. In the closing ceremony on 28th October, Professor Kondo's presentation received the silver prize of the AAOU Best Practice Award.

Associate Professor Shibasaki made the presentation titled "Development and Evaluation of Learners' Viewing Response Systems for Video Content as Instruction and Learning Support Tool in Blended Learning''. He spoke about the development and assessment of the interactive learning support system called learners' viewing response systems.

Professor Tsuneo Yamada, with his project team members offered a speech with the title ''Analysis of Learning Processes and Outcomes in an OUJ-MOOC Practice".

On the last day of the conference, President Okabe took the stage and delivered his speech on the theme titled "New Market for Asian OUs -- ODL in Asia in 21st Century''. He spoke about the possibilities of increasing the number of students in the Asian open universities in the future, referring to the issues universities in Japan have at the moment.

The next AAOU Conference will be held from 27th September to 29th September 2017 in Royal Ambarrukmo Hotel, Yogyakarta, Indonesia and it will be hosted by Universitas Terbuka (Indonesia Open University).