ACE/ACSET2013


“Learning and Teaching in Changing Times”

October 24–27, 2013 | The Ramada Osaka, Osaka, Japan

Back to Top


ACE/ACSET Welcome Letters

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the Fifth Asian Conference on Education, which I am delighted to co-Chair with Professor Michiko Nakano and Professor Barbara Lockee. I had the pleasure of being at the inaugural conference of ACE in 2009 and at most of its subsequent conferences, as well as at the Inaugural European Conference on Education this summer.

I am very much looking forward to being in Osaka this October and to meeting as many of the 500 conference delegates as possible. The aim of the Asian Conferences on Education is to encourage academics and scholars to meet and exchange ideas and views in a forum that encourages respectful dialogue. What I particularly appreciate at these conferences is the shared development of intellectual ideas and the challenges to dominant paradigms that occur through the academic exchanges of the conferences. I have every confidence that this year’s conference will extend and develop this work still further and I know that the keynote and featured speakers will bring much to these debates and discussions.

The conference theme of “Learning and Teaching in Changing Times” is a challenging one across educational contexts and is no doubt in part the reason that this conference has attracted so many delegates from across the globe. As education systems becoming increasingly socially, ethnically and culturally diverse, both as a consequence of globalisation and in response to internationalisation, the challenges of engaging with and working through change become ever more important. Whilst this brings challenges, engagement with change also bodes well for the pursuit of new knowledges and understandings.

The programme for this conference promises to be an exciting one, with thematic themes that address the central aim of the conference in different but complementary ways, including through papers that draw on empirical research, that develop theoretical and conceptual insights, and that engage with pedagogy, experiential and lifelong learning. The conference will be enhanced through its wide variety of presenters, who will draw on their diverse experiences and knowledges and on their academic, personal and geographical contexts, in a programme that promises exciting and challenging discussion. I have no doubt that we will all be able to use the time spent at this conference for intellectual discovery and for the development of collaborative links and connections between the researchers, academics, scholars and practitioners who are attending.

I strongly encourage your active engagement in this conference, and very much look forward to meeting you in Osaka and to continuing the work of ACE into the future.

Yours sincerely,

Sue Jackson
ACE2013 Conference Co-Chair
Pro-Vice-Master, Learning and Teaching
Professor of Lifelong Learning and Gender
Birkbeck, University of London, UK


Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the first Asian Conference on Society Education and Technology (ACSET).

This first conference gathers people, knowledge and experience from across the globe to consider Learning and Teaching in Changing Times. The importance of this theme is underlined by the OECD Secretary-General’s introduction to the OECD Skills Outlook 2013* report which begins:

It is no exaggeration to use the word “revolution” when talking about how our lives have changed over the past few decades. Today we rely on information and communication technologies and devices that hadn’t even been imagined in 1980. The way we live and work has changed profoundly — and so has the set of skills we need to participate fully in and benefit from our hyper-connected societies and increasingly knowledge-based economies.

The OECD report concentrates on adult skills and how they confer abilities in technology-rich environments. Technology and society as we already know, are intimately linked but technology seems to move just that little bit faster than society. Those of us involved in teaching know that we must prepare young adults for a lifetime of learning so as to equip them for a lifetime of dealing with the changes that technology will bring. This gathering will provide a forum to exchange ideas, insights and inspiration for dealing with the difficult problems of managing technology driven change. The keynote and featured speakers will bring much to these debates and discussions and I hope that the conference provides a lively and stimulating intellectual experience. Osaka provides an excellent location for the conference, it is a well connected industrial and business centre with the historical centre of Kyoto and trading centre of Kobe nearby. Enjoy both the conference and your stay in Osaka.

With best wishes,

Robert Logie
ACSET2013 Conference Co-Chair
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Osaka Gakuin University, Japan

*OECD (2013), OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills, OECD Publishing.

Back to Top


Speakers & Conference Chairs

Professor Sue Jackson

Birkbeck University of London, UK

Featured Panel Chair & ACE2013 Conference Chair

Professor Sue JacksonSue Jackson is Pro-Vice-Master (Vice-President) for Learning and Teaching and Professor of Lifelong Learning and Gender at Birkbeck University of London. She publishes widely in the field of gender and lifelong learning, with a particular focus on identities. Sue’s recent publications include Challenges and Inequalities in Lifelong Learning and Social Justice (Routledge, 2013); Innovations in lifelong learning: critical perspectives on diversity, participation and vocational learning (Routledge, 2011); Gendered choices: learning, work, identities in lifelong learning (Springer, 2011, with Irene Malcolm and Kate Thomas); and Lifelong learning and social justice communities, work and identities in a globalised world (NIACE, 2011). Sue has recently been awarded a prestigious National Teaching Fellowship from the UK’s Higher Education Academy. Sue is delighted and honoured to be Conference Chair of the Inaugural European Conference on Education, having been involved with the Asian Conferences on Education since their inception: first as a featured speaker in 2009; then as co-Chair and keynote speaker in 2010; and co-Chair for the 2011 and 2012 conferences.

Back to Top


Professor Michiko Nakano

Waseda University, Japan

Featured Speaker & ACE2013 Conference Chair

Michiko Nakano is a Full Professor in the School of Education at Waseda University in Tokyo. She is currently Director of the Digital Campus Promotion Office, Director of the Distance Learning Center, and Director of Cross-Cultural Distance Learning. A former Deputy Dean of Student Affairs, School of Education at Waseda University and a former Chairman of the Department of English Language and Literature. Dr Nakano’s research concentrates on the practical applications of Computer Technology as it relates to Language Teaching and Assessment. She is the co-founder of the Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics (PAAL), and co-editor-in-chief of its journal, and a former secretary general of the Japan Association of College English Teachers (JACET). Dr Nakano has edited and published more than 220 papers and books.

Featured Panel Presentation (2013) | “Theories and Practices in English as an International Language (EIL), World Englishes (WE), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) Seen in Students Perception Data”

This symposium addresses the issues of the gap between theoretical stances and inferential data in WE, EIL and ELF, on one hand, and university students’ judgments and perception about theoretical stances and inferential data. We collected students’ responses about these issues. The participants are students who have taken the cyber course called World Englishes or those who have cyber interactions among Asian countries and who have used English as ELF. In this globalized world, most of learners are exposed to English use in their daily life, such as newspapers, TV, music, movies, the Internet and other social networking services. This suggests that our students must have their own judgments about the functions of English. We try to investigate whether their judgments agree with the factual claims med by WE proponents, and ELF proponents.

Back to Top


Professor Keith W. Miller

University of Missouri – St. Louis, USA

Keynote Speaker & ACSET2013 Conference Chair

Keith W. Miller is the Orthwein Endowed Professor for Lifelong Learning in the Sciences at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. In that position, he is partnering with the St. Louis Science Center. He was formerly Schewe Professor of Liberal Arts and Science at the University of Illinois Springfield. Dr Miller’s research interests are in software testing and in computer ethics. Formerly the editor-in-chief of IEEE Technology and Society, he now sits on the board. He was awarded the 2011 Joseph Weizenbaum Award by the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology. He is the principal investigator of a recent grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to study the effects of ethics education for computer science students.

Keynote Presentation (2013) | “Discerning Rights and Wrongs while Teaching and Learning in the Age of Robotics”

It has become commonplace for pundits to announce that the age of robotics is imminent. (For example, see [1].) The statistics are hard to argue with: in 2011, for example, 166,028 industrial robots were sold worldwide. [2] What does the increasing number of robots and other sophisticated machines mean for education? Some worry that machines will replace educators. [3] Some believe that machines will enhance education for both learners and teachers. [4] In this talk, we will use sociotechnical analysis to explore the intersection of sophisticated electronic artifacts, educational goals, and ethics. Specifically, we will examine MOOCs (especially their automated aspects), classes delivered by mobile phones, and robots in classrooms.

We will argue that with each of these sociotechnical systems, there are critical moments in the development of the technology, and critical moments in the development of how teachers and learners use the technology. At these critical moments, decisions are made that help determine if the educational use of the technology will be, in the long run, a good thing for society. We also will argue that several critical moments are approaching for MOOCs, mobile phone teaching aps, and robots for the classroom.

References

  1. Dominic Rushe. Dawn of the age of the robot. The Guardian (29 December 2010), http://www.theguardian. com/business/2010/dec/30/futurologist-predicts-age-of-robots, accessed 24 September 2013.
  2. ST Robotics. Robot Stats, 2013. http://www.strobotics.com/stats.htm, accessed 24 September 2013.
  3. Martin D. Snyder. State of the profession: much ado about MOOCs. AAUP (Nov.-Dec. 2012), http://www. aaup.org/article/state-profession-much-ado-about-moocs#.UkG7EevFa60, accessed 24 September 2013.
  4. Technology Enhanced Learning Symposium (7-8 October 2013), http://cdtl.nus.edu.sg/tel2013/, accessed 24 September 2013.

Back to Top


Professor Barbara Lockee

Virginia Tech, USA

ACSET2013 Conference Chair

Barbara Lockee is Professor of Instructional Design and Technology at Virginia Tech., USA, where she is also Associate Director of the School of Education and Associate Director of Educational Research and Outreach. She teaches courses in instructional design, message design, and distance education. Her research interests focus on instructional design issues related to technology-mediated learning. She has published more than 80 papers in academic journals, conferences and books, and has presented her scholarly work at over 90 national and international conferences. Dr Lockee is Immediate Past President of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, an international professional organization for educational technology researchers and practitioners. She earned her Ph.D. in 1996 from Virginia Tech in Curriculum and Instruction (Instructional Technology), M.A. in 1991 from Appalachian State University in Curriculum and Instruction (Educational Media), and B.A. in 1986 from Appalachian State University in Communication Arts.

Back to Top


Professor Robert Logie

Osaka Jogakuin University, Japan

ACSET2013 Conference Chair

Robert Logie is an associate professor at Osaka Gakuin University. His current research interests are logics of agency, fuzzy and modal logics and network intrusion detection systems.

After working as an engineer on roads and bridges in the north of Scotland and as a high school teacher in Bermuda he drifted towards academia. An M.Sc. at Strathclyde led to Oxford with work in the Department of Engineering Science and at St. John’s College. He returned to Strathclyde to manage an AI applications laboratory in the Centre for Electrical Power engineering before meeting someone he met at Oxford, marrying, and moving to her home country.

His working life in Japan started at IBM’s Yamato software laboratory where he worked on developing database query visualisation tools and database access modules for Lotus’s Domino server. His wife was posted to Geneva where Rob started a Ph.D. at the Open University and this lead to his current research interests and teaching career.

Back to Top


Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova

Moscow State University, Russia

Keynote Speaker

Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova is President of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, and Professor Emeritus in the University. She holds a Doctorate of Philology from Lomonosov Moscow State University, and has published more than 200 books and papers both in Russian and English on Foreign Language Teaching, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, and has lectured widely throughout the world.

Professor Svetlana Ter-Minasova is President of National Association for Applied Linguistics (NAAL), Chair of the Russian Ministry of Education’s Foreign Language Research and Methodology Council, and President and founder of both the National Society for English Language Teachers in Russia, and the National Association of Applied Linguistics. She holds the Lomonosov Award for teaching achievements, Fulbright’s 50th Anniversary Award, and was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Birmingham in the UK, the State University of New York (SUNY) in the USA, and the Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University, in Armenia.

Keynote Presentation (2013) | “ELT in a Changing Russia: Traditions and Innovations”

The present-day situation with FLLT in Russia stems from various historically and culturally determined traditions which can be summed up as follows:

  1. Depth, Perfectionism, Deliberate Anti-pragmatism.
  2. Solid Theoretical Basis.
  3. Mass Production of FLLT in the Soviet period.

  4. Teacher Orientation. Under Soviet rule the traditions were strengthened and formulated as pivots of FLLT.

These were certainties to be followed faithfully and blindly. The whirlwind of Post-Soviet period swept away most of the old ideas and introduced new polarly opposed ones which could not help causing confusions. The changes and innovations in the sphere of FLLT in Russia brought by the new times (omitting those shared with the rest of the world: the advance of New Technologies, globalization consequences, etc.):

  1. A great variety of motivations, goals, demands, types of learners, language teaching materials and methods.
  2. A “discovery” of the cultural barrier, a burst of interest in Cross-cultural studies, the revival of “dead” languages.
  3. An intense interest in non-verbal means of communication.
  4. A conflict of cultures between teachers and students.
  5. Introduction of Russian National Exam. Finally, the major, starring, title role that professional communities are called to play in the development of FLLT in Russia. It is our cause to replace the governmental orders of the old times with the ideas developed by professionals in language learning and teaching, especially as our profession is unique in the sense that we are both foreign language teachers and learners.

Back to Top


Dr Jerry Platt

San Francisco State University, USA / Akita University, Japan

Featured Speaker & IAFOR IAB Vice-Chair

Dr Jerry Platt is Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University, and Vice-Chair of The International Academic Forum’s IAB. His interests span business, technology and public policy. Jerry previously served as dean at two American business schools. He spent most of his academic career at San Francisco State University, in their AACSB-accredited College of Business that enrolls more than 6,000 students from more than 70 countries. He started as a part-time lecturer one night a week while working in industry, became a full time Professor of Finance, and rose through the ranks to become the first internal selection as Dean of the College. Later, Jerry moved to Southern California to accept appointment to the initial Senecal endowed chair and School of Business deanship at the University of Redlands. Balancing industry with academic interests, Jerry also served as head of financial analysis for a Bay Area Fortune 500 company, and as CEO of an aviation firm. He has been Principal Investigator on more than twenty U.S. federal research grants.

Dr Platt received a B.S. cum laude at Michigan State University, an MBA from Wayne State University, an M.S. in Public Administration from The Ohio State University, and an M.S. in Statistical Computing from Stanford University. He was granted the first Ph.D. degree from what is now the John Glenn Graduate School of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University.

Featured Presentation (2013) | “In Omoikane We Trust, All Others Bring Data”

Omoikane (思兼) -- The Shinto deity of wisdom and intelligence, often called upon to “ponder” and give good counsel in the deliberations of the heavenly deities.

Today in Japan, anxious students pay homage to Omoikane at the Chichibu and Togakushi shrines prior to taking important tests – and one suspects more than a few senior administrators do likewise on the eve of the release of school rankings.

Perhaps a case can be made that university or academic programs should not be directly compared and ranked, one relative to another. However, that train has left the station; rankings are here to stay, and are increasingly relied upon by both parents and prospective employers, exploited by administrators externally to market their programs and internally to buttress institutional and political agendas, and featured by newspaper and magazine editors to increase circulation.

Instead, the focus here is on demonstrating the folly of trusting reported rankings without first considering the methodological choices that generated those results. Examples from published university rankings currently in circulation, – in Japan, throughout Asia, and globally – demonstrate that education rankings sometimes are based on incoherent or incomplete measures, sometimes are biased beyond salvation, and usually are shrouded in weighting schemes that are not reported, are biased, or at best are highly subjective. Consumer safety guidelines are suggested.

Back to Top


Professor Mary Stuart

University of Lincoln, UK

Featured Speaker

Professor Mary Stuart joined the University of Lincoln as Vice Chancellor in November 2009. She is a graduate of the University of Cape Town and the Open University where she obtained her Doctorate in Social Policy in 1998. Her research interests are focused on life histories, social mobility, higher education students and community development.

Since joining the University of Lincoln, Mary has renewed the curriculum at Lincoln, growing science provision and establishing the first new engineering school to be created in the UK for more than 20 years in collaboration with engineering giant Siemens plc. Mary recently announced plans to create a new science and innovation park, including a school of pharmacy, in collaboration with Lincolnshire Co-operative. Passionate about the student experience, she has developed new student engagement opportunities at Lincoln, working closely with Lincoln’s Students’ Union, and has also introduced new programmes to improve graduate employability. Mary has been a champion of widening participation and life-long learning and her latest book, Social Mobility and Higher Education: The life experiences of first generation entrants in higher education, was published in 2012.

Mary was previously Deputy Vice Chancellor at Kingston University and a Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Sussex between 2000 and 2005. She has extensive experience of developing partnership working between institutions and leading change within universities.

She is a Board member of Universities UK, a member of HEFCE’s Teaching Quality and Student Experience Strategic Committee and the Higher Education Public Information Steering Group as well as being Chair of the Universities Association of Lifelong Learning (UALL), Chair of Open Educational Resource (OER) Steering Group, chair of Action on Access Advisory Committee and Deputy Chair of the University Alliance.

Mary has a strong commitment to the arts and is a member of the Arts Council in the East Midlands, as well as being a keen theatre goer and a lover of modern art and jazz.”

Featured Presentation (2013) | “Access, Equality and Virtual Learning - the Implications of Social and Cultural Capital in the Learning Environment”

Over the last few years interest in forms of on-line learning in HE have developed, most notably the MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), movement. In the face of inequality between different student groups across the globe in HE, I will argue that claims for MOOCs and such developments need to be contextualised in pedagogy that takes account of theories of social inequalities and learning challenges. I will present data from a recent study that highlights how different student groups engage with on-line learning and the implications for future use of on-line learning methodologies such as MOOCs.

Back to Top


Professor Ted O’Neill

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, TMDU, Japan

Featured Speaker

Ted O’Neill is an English language instructor based in Tokyo, Japan. He taught at J. F. Oberlin University from 2005-2011 where he also served as Coordinator for the Foundation English Program. In 2011, he took up a position as Associate Professor of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Tokyo Medical and Dental University. He received an MA in ESL and Bilingual Education from the University of Massachusetts/Boston.

He is a past co-editor of The Language Teacher for the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) and currently serves on the JALT National Board of Directors as Director of Public Relations. Ted joined the Apple Distinguished Educator Program in 2011.

Featured Presentation (2013) | “Getting to the Point: The Least Educators Need to Know About Massively Open Online Courses Now”

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) started in 2008 as a connectivist experiment in education. Extremely large MOOCs were convened in 2011, and the term took off in the popular media in 2012. This year, the backlash is well underway. However, these experiments should still be of interest to teachers and have the potential to benefit many learners.

MOOCs have been hailed as revolutionary and disruptive to the status quo in higher education. They have also been put forward as a fix for rising university costs, perceived declines in quality, and problems of access all-in-one. However, few of the ideas behind MOOCs are new. Moreover, as for-profit corporations have co-opted and fragmented the initial practice, there is no longer even a clear consensus on a coherent description of MOOCs.

This presentation will bring educators up-to-date on the current state of MOOCs–including a critical view of their potential. This will help in evaluating MOOCs and making informed choices about selecting courses, using them to augment their own teaching, participating in them directly, or even starting one. Participants will gain a critical understanding of MOOCs and see how this trend may change education in their contexts.

Back to Top


Terry Small

Terry Small Institute, Canada

Featured Speaker

Terry Small is a master teacher and learning skills specialist with extensive involvement in applied neuroscience, and who has presented on the brain for over 30 years to organizations around the world. Terry works with schools, universities and some of the world’s largest corporations, and is featured regularly on television, the radio and in the press. Terry believes, “Anyone can learn how to learn easier, better, faster”, and that “learning to learn is the most important skill a person can acquire.” Terry holds a B.Ed. and M.A. from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and now resides in Vancouver. He is a frequent lecturer at both his alma mater, as well as Simon Fraser University.

Featured Presentation (2013) | “Engaging The Brain – Using Neuroscience to Improve Student Learning”

Have you ever taught something only to discover that it just did not “stick” in the minds of your students? Research has a great deal to say about the brain and learning! It is possible to easily help students learn faster and remember more... and have more fun.

How would you like to extend your skills, knowledge, and experience so that your students can build confidence, academic achievement, and self-esteem? And how would you like new tools and ideas to make your work more fun and reach more students?

You will learn many practical tips and strategies that you can use immediately in your class and you life. Participants: teachers, specialists, administrators, parents, K through post secondary. You will learn and discover: how the brain processes information the best way for students to take notes, why state and strategy are just as important as content, the top 10 Brain-Learning Principles, what students report is the #1 Study Technique, how music affects learning, how to boost attention, how to increase the capacity of one’s memory, and much, much more!

This session is lively, humorous, and interactive. You will leave with new knowledge and many eye-opening ideas that will make this year different.

Back to Top


Dr Marjo Mitsutomi

Osaka Gakuin University, Japan

Featured Speaker

Marjo Mitsutomi is multilingual, and Professor and Executive Director of the recently created Language Education Institute (LEI) at Osaka Gakuin University, Japan. Prior to her current position at OGU, she was academic director of three language acquisition programs at Akita International University, Japan. For many years, Dr Mitsutomi was on faculty at the University of Redlands in Southern California, where she taught in the School of Education’s graduate program, represented the entire university faculty as their elected president for academic governance, and served as director on the Orange County campus. A native of Finland,, Dr Mitsutomi holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics, is fluent in three languages and conversational in another three, and has lived for more than a decade in each of three continents: Europe, North America, and Asia. Dr Mitsutomi has participated in several cross-disciplinary projects involving language development, planning and policy. She has consulted with the California Commission on Teacher Education and the United States Federal Aviation Agency (FAA). Her most notable contribution as a linguist was as co-author of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) aviation English proficiency standards for pilots and air traffic controllers worldwide. This ICAO proficiency standard governing both native and non-native speakers of English is the first global language mandate of its kind. Adopted by vote at the United Nations, it unites professionals from almost 200 nations, in achieving best practices by the use of a common language for a dedicated purpose, safety through communication.

Featured Presentation (2013) | "From Bonsai to Banzai: A Mind Shift in the Approach to Teaching and Learning English in Japan”

Because times change, social systems must change with them. Of all human support systems, it is often the educational systems that lag the furthest behind. On the practical side, teachers are in contact with students the most. Yet, they tend to continue to teach the way they always have even though they are the very people who should stay up-to-date regarding the developments in their own discipline and those in pedagogy in general. The official and political side of education systems tends to be run by bureaucrats whose understanding of human learning and organizational leadership in general may be found lacking. Therefore, educational systems are slow to respond to changing times by failing to act with appropriate measures to the external pressures placed on schools by society at large.

This paper discusses the dramatic changes that are required in Japan’s English language education system. In the last many decades, little has changed in English as a foreign language instruction in the nation’s public schools, which require all students to have six years of English throughout junior high and high school. Yet, the world around and in Japan has changed, which has resulted in a complete mismatch of what students are being taught and what they actually should know by graduation. For Japan to “catch up” with the English proficiency levels of other Asian nations and to equip its own future workforce to manage doing business in a global environment, immediate, deep and radical changes are required both in policy and practice.

Back to Top