糖心视频

Developing logical writing skills as part of academic ability

This initiative was carried out from 2008 to 2010 and has continued as an Aoyama Gakuin University initiative since 2011.

Program Overview

The development of modern Japanese people's native language expression skills, especially the ability to understand and write objective and logical texts, is an essential task for today's universities, along with the development of IT skills. At present, the ability to understand and write objective and logical texts such as reports and papers has declined significantly, and training in this area is insufficient. However, the recognition that "it is a necessary skill for all university students regardless of their field of specialization" has become established in society. As a result, the development of writing skills itself has been recognized as an educational subject, and has been incorporated as part of basic liberal arts education, and it is becoming common to see curriculum implementation in the form of face-to-face classes by teachers. However, in order to develop writing skills, training through exercises and practical training is essential, as it is not possible to develop skills through lectures alone. However, it is difficult in reality to leave it to teachers to handle such a task. This initiative aims to solve these problems by making the most of natural language processing technology and information processing technology. In other words, the purpose is to contribute to solving these problems by building a writing understanding and writing support system that can automatically generate exercises as much as possible and automatically evaluate and correct writing written by students.

Representative: Professor Hiromasa Inatsumi School of Social Informatics

Program implementation report

The overall objective of this project is to (1) develop and technically establish a text comprehension support system, a text composition support system, an automatic question generation support system, etc. in order to foster the ability to understand and compose objective and logical texts, (2) build an educational system that enables students to think for themselves while understanding and compiling objective and logical texts through exercises that make effective use of the systems, and (3) guarantee objective and logical text comprehension and composition abilities university-wide through the proposed educational system, aiming to facilitate a smooth transition to specialized education for each student, regardless of field.
The requirements for achieving this goal are (1) development of tools to support the system (including proofreading and revision, logical structure design, teaching material creation, and test-setting tools), (2) enrichment of content and development of teaching methodology (establishment of a support system in collaboration with Japanese language education experts and introduction of know-how from other universities' initiatives such as the Distinctive GP), and (3) construction and enrichment of a large-group teaching system (construction of a university-wide implementation system).As part of the above, we were able to concretely address the following: "Refining various tools and courseware," "Training basic course support students," "Regular operation of the basic course (School of Social Informatics, Communication Basics)," "Refining courseware and designing custom and advanced courses (combining self-study practice environments and theoretical learning)," "Test operation of custom courses and proposal of advanced courses (non-regular curriculum in the form of seminars)," "Verification of the automatic question generation support system," "Text comprehension," and "Verification of technical achievements and educational effects and holding of an evaluation committee."

Program Outcomes

The purpose of this initiative was to provide an environment where students could reexamine writing as a means of expression and think about ways to express themselves in writing in order to communicate accurately. To achieve this, the theme was to create a labor-saving environment that would allow students to consider and review "writing structure," proofread and polish their writing, and provide an environment for "peer evaluation" to encourage reconfirmation, as well as "exercises" to learn the basic rules. In other words, the theme was to make effective use of ICT. However, the important thing here was to create a situation where students could become aware of things and learn on their own.
Although we have been able to make inroads over the past three years, we will continue this initiative going forward as there is still technological development that remains to be done.
Additionally, we hope to have the results we have gained so far be utilized in many educational settings in the future, thereby improving technology and contributing to the field.