○What is the Kyushu University Library Innovation Center for Educational Resources?

The Innovation Center for Educational Resources was established in April 2011 to enhance the quality of teaching materials at Kyushu University, thereby improving the quality of the education that it offers. The center carries out various activities focused on providing faculty members with support in the production of teaching materials, and developing and proposing innovative teaching materials and education methods, as outlined below.

1. Support for the production of teaching materials

• • (1)The center organizes FD courses on such topics as software for producing teaching materials and the handling of copyright in producing teaching materials, to help faculty members to improve their skills.
  • (2)Making effective use of the relationship between sound and video, the center develops and proposes teaching materials using unprecedented video content that facilitates more effective learning.
  • (3)In partnership with schools, institutes and faculties, the center jointly produces and supports the production of various teaching materials. To facilitate the provision of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and SPOCs (Small Private Online Courses) by means of video-based teaching materials, the center has set up a studio and is devoting its energies to producing high-quality video-based teaching materials in English.

2. Recording classes on video and publishing them online

The center supports the recording of classes and the publication of the video footage. The publication of videos of the classes has the following three major advantages.

• • (1)Publishing videos of classes helps to extend the period of learning for students, as they can use these videos to revise what they have learned during the current semester and prepare for classes during subsequent academic years, thereby promoting a greater understanding of the content.
  • (2)Making videos of classes available to a global audience increases the university's potential to attract high-caliber students.
  • (3)Making videos of classes in English available increases the likelihood that high-caliber international students will ask to take such classes.

3. Publishing teaching materials

• • (1)The teaching materials produced are published via the center's website or QOCW, while video-based teaching materials are available via YouTube, the university intranet, and iTunes Podcast. t is possible to restrict the scope within which materials are made available.

4.Teaching and learning environment

• • (1)Developing easily comprehensible teaching materials that make use of 3DCG and other forms of ICT, and making use of such materials in classes helps to evoke an interest in the content of the classes on the part of students, and promote a better understanding of that content.
  • (2)Proposing, developing, and popularizing new teaching and learning environments in which students can participate actively in learning, moving beyond traditional lesson forms in which teachers talk and students merely listen, helps to make classes more enjoyable.