Abstracts of Magazine FUJITSU 2014-5 (Vol. 65, No. 3)

Special Issue: Education Solution

Primary Education

• Current Situation and Problems with ICT Utilization in Primary and Secondary Education

Society has been significantly changed by the development of information and communications technology (ICT). Education also must change according to the changes in society. The Japanese government has been working on educational informatization since the 1980s. Especially, after the change of regime from the Democratic Party of Japan to the Liberal Democratic Party in 2012, the policies related to ICT in education environments have been accelerated. Fujitsu has participated in the government's verification projects and provided and accumulated technologies and know-how for the purpose of innovating education and learning by utilizing ICT. There are still a lot of problems in educational informatization such as handling of personal data and copyrights and cost burden. Based on the above technologies and know-how however, we at Fujitsu consider and create new learning concepts with teachers and resolve the problems one after another to cooperate in educational innovation. This paper describes the government policy for educational informatization and Fujitsu's efforts.

• Working on School Business Support Services for Elementary and Junior High Schools: FUJITSU Education Solution K-12 School Business Support

Under the measures and policies of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the education boards in local governments and elementary and junior high schools in Japan have started making full-scale use of ICT for their education. According to the Results of a Survey on Educational Informatization in Schools released by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the objective of one information terminal per member of teaching staff has almost been achieved in all parts of the country. In addition, it was found that more than 60% of elementary and junior high schools have already computerized their documents on school affairs. The plan to have one information terminal per school child or student is now underway and further promotion of ICT use for education is expected. With such informatization progress, in the spring of 2013, Fujitsu released SaaS-type "FUJITSU Education Solution K-12 School Business Support" services by integrating the school business know-how it has accumulated for many years. The service is a forward-looking trial to cause a stir in the existing school business operation forms mainly provided with packages, ASP, and private cloud etc. In this paper, we will consider the computerization of elementary and junior high schools affairs and introduce the working of "FUJITSU Education Solution K-12 School Business Support" services and their expected effects.

• Working on Educational Support for Children with Special Needs: K-12 SNE Kids Touch

Schools of today need ICT-enabled educational tools of the 21^st century. Deployment of ICT is highly effective to enhance educators' performance in special needs education (SNE) as well as in ordinary classes and extra-curricular activities. In June 2012, Fujitsu started developing an educational software series to cater for the conditions and requirements of children with special needs, "FUJITSU Education Solution K-12 SNE Kids Touch." Conducting joint research with the Sakai Laboratory at the Faculty of Education in Kagawa University, Fujitsu evaluated the program and improved its operability and functionality. K-12 SNE Kids Touch comprises four software programs: "Let's draw lines!" "Let's write hiragana !" "Let's write katakana !" and "Let's do jigsaw puzzles!" Designed for children with physical or intellectual difficulties and developmental disorders, they are equipped with a touch-based interface, and include features such as difficulty-level settings adjustable according to the child's development, addition and composition of educational materials, and record-tracking to make it easier to follow up on children's learning progress. This paper will outline these unique features, and describe the trials conducted at special needs schools and the outcomes.

• Next Generation of Digital Educational Material Solutions with Use of Tablets

Fujitsu Network Solutions Limited has developed the next generation of digital educational material solutions with the use of tablets through a collaborative project with schools where education is actually provided, based on school educational problems in elementary and secondary educations. A modular learning system is one of the digital educational materials that provides effective training for the prefrontal area working as a brain control tower and improves the concentration and memory underlying academic capability in a short period of time. Another system for collaborative learning is digital educational material allowing a dramatic speed-up of communications between students and teaching staff or between students, while supporting the development of thinking power, judgment, and expressive power. It is advantageous to introduce these digital educational materials with tablets because they can continuously maintain and improve fundamental and basic knowledge and skills and support the development of collaborative problem-solving skills. In this paper, an outline of the next generation of digital educational material solution systems that support new learning for the 21st century and their introduction effects are described.

Higher Education

• Working on Visualization of Academic Behaviors with Learning Management System for Universities—CoursePower

In recent years, universities have been facing increased competition both domestically and internationally due to the low birth rate in Japan and globalization. As a result, universities are expected to improve the quality of their education. Various types of admissions systems and high-school instruction have diversified students' academic achievements and their orientations. Consequently, there is an urgent need for individualized instruction suited to each student's particular abilities. In these circumstances, Fujitsu has provided a learning management system for universities, called CoursePower, to meet universities' needs for better education quality, such as an improvement of course contents and their methods and ensuring transparency of academic achievement assessments. Furthermore, we provide functions to analyze each student's level of preparedness, course review habits, and participation in lectures and to show the characteristics of academic behaviors by using charts. Through these functions, we support appropriate tutoring and help to improve education quality. This paper describes the background to and summary of the development of CoursePower and its function to visualize academic behaviors.

• Fujitsu's Efforts for Education and Research System

Over the past several years, smartphones have become widely used, tablet PCs have emerged, and system environments have been reviewed considering countermeasures against disasters. Information and communications technology (ICT) environments surrounding us are changing. Such trends also have impacts on educational places. In particular, as ICT environments in universities, it is preferable to have systems that can be used more simply and more flexibly by users including students and teachers. Now, a virtual desktop system, which is less affected by the devices to be used, is attracting people's attention. However, considering that universities' usage environments differ from those of companies, there are some problems to solve such as those related to the system scale and license. The important task is to find a balance between provision of new values and cost reduction. This paper introduces the issues with the education and research system provided by Fujitsu and its efforts to improve them. In addition, the expected future trends are described.

• On-Campus Data Utilization: Working on IR (Institutional Research) in Universities

Institutional research (IR) in universities refers to a wide range of activities such as collection and analysis of on-campus data, planning of measures for improvements, and implementations and verifications of the measures for the purpose of management improvement, student support, and higher-quality education. In Japan's universities, improvements with on-campus data utilization have been increasingly expected and there has been a big upsurge in IR for this. And universities are seeking approaches for specific practices. In response to such trends in Japan, the Educational Solution Department in Fujitsu has been currently working on IR research and study aiming to provide new services that can contribute to university business and management. Specifically, we carried out surveys on the needs for and expectations of IR, made hypotheses, and conducted trial experiments of data analysis. By using various statistical analysis methods, we also tested the trend analysis of the improvement in educational quality and dropout prevention, for which data utilization will be especially needed in universities. Furthermore, research on dropout prediction was carried out, by which it is possible to predict which students may leave universities in the future from their current situation. Through the approaches above, we are currently defining the concept of Fujitsu's IR and examining the provision of services supporting IR practices in universities. In this paper, the IR trend research and study that we have tackled so far and the Fujitsu's IR are described.

• Achievement of Next-Generation ICT Infrastructure with UnifIDone Campus Cloud

These days, the information and communications technology (ICT) environments in universities such as the spread of students' smartphone usage have been significantly changing. Diversification of users and usage scenes leads not only to a change in the existing learning environments, but also to a disorganized increase and upsurge in ICT services provided by universities. As a result, an urgent issue now is to have effective ICT operations. Fujitsu's "FUJITSU Education Solution UnifIDone Campus Cloud" is a private cloud solution tailored to universities' operational characteristics. In this solution, the IaaS function, which performs flexible dispensing of a server environment, and the DaaS function, which allows a desktop environment to be used whenever it is required, are integrated and managed. The functions required by universities are added and then the solution is provided as integrated cloud infrastructure. The characteristic of this solution is that it allows users to enjoy at home or anywhere the PC environment that is offered in a usual classroom using various devices, and study in the environment they want, when they want. Moreover, it is possible to operate it by utilizing the merits of an on-campus cloud such as the ability to ensure priority of the virtual desktop used in the classroom. In addition, through the integrated management of client and server resources, the ICT resources of a university overall can be used effectively and optimized, and consequently effective ICT operations for a university overall can be achieved.

Public

• Solution Concept for Public Libraries: One Library

Fujitsu has been engaged in the public library market for over 30 years. With all-around support that covers the overall market through multiple products and services, Fujitsu currently has the largest share of this market in Japan. However, public libraries are operated mainly by local governments and they provide free-of-charge services in principle. Consequently, there are some aspects where the cost-benefit achieved with information and communications technology (ICT) cannot be directly identified. Furthermore, the current economic circumstances weigh on the operations of public libraries and make it difficult to invest in keeping and expanding services. On the other hand, there are growing needs for public library services due to changes in people's lifestyle that are caused by ICT such as the spread of smart devices. In consideration of these situations, Fujitsu has set out the concept "One Library" as guidelines for promoting new proposal activities and product development while continuing to expand multiple existing products. In this paper, the background to this concept creation and the product development based on this concept are described.

Global

• Museum Solutions under Active Global Expansion

The importance of museum materials is increasing as time passes and there is also a growing need to manage them with databases by making use of information technology (IT). In addition, with the strong originality of individual museums, such management systems are required to be highly flexible. In these circumstances, Fujitsu offers museum solutions mainly including Musetheque, a collection management system, in order to help create value for museums. Musetheque is characterized by its flexibility that allows collection items handled by museums to be added, and ability to easily store information that is located in different categories into databases for management. It also features an excellent search response that is not degraded by large sizes of data. This paper describes the strengths of the museum solutions provided by Fujitsu and their global expansion.

• Field Test Activities for Student Support Solution in Collaboration with Chulalongkorn University

Fujitsu constructed a student portfolio system based on its student support system Campusmate-J/Student series and started field trials in June 2013 in collaboration with Chulalongkorn University of the Kingdom of Thailand. This was done for the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of the system and expanding features that meet the needs of universities in Thailand. Fujitsu aims to have this system provide information and advice tailored to the circumstances of target users, or individual students who excel in sports, art and music. Therefore, in field trials the basic, performance/registration and other types of information collected across multiple departments at the university were consolidated into this system so as to make them visible. The aim of this system is to improve the quality of student services, strengthen support for career development and improve the efficiency of the educational and administrative operations of the university.

New Technology

• Approach to Education Innovation Making Use of Open Content

Currently, education innovation called open education, which originated in the United States, is becoming widespread all over the world. The style of learning is making a sea change from educator-centric to learner-centric learning through utilization of features of the Web. Therefore, we have been working since 2011 on research and development of "curation learning," a new method in which content and services on the Web are combined for social learning through cooperation with others, and a platform for realizing the method. With this method, people learn through repeating a cycle of actively "searching," "creating" and "engaging," with the aim of not only acquiring information but also cultivating "21st-century skills" including critical thinking, communication/collaboration ability and information literacy. This paper describes case studies at North American universities using the curation learning method and the platform, and presents a future outlook.