Images of Japan— Collaborative Learning System for Japanese and Japanese Culture —

摘要

In 1995, Tatsuta and Gunji created the networked courseware, "Chado in the Middle of the Cornfield" (http://www.art.uiuc.edu/tea). Since the development of the courseware, Gunji has been using the courseware as part of her teaching materials in two classes: (1) Art & Design 209: Tea Ceremony and Zen Aesthetics, and (2) East Asian Languages and Cultures 150: Japanese Culture. Student responses toward this courseware have been very positive and encouraging. We have presented papers titled "Exploring the Japanese Tea Ceremony via Internet" at ED-MEDIA95 and " Evaluation of Networked Courseware" at WebNet96. [Tatsuta et al. 95][Tatsuta et al. 96][Tatsuta et.al.97] Encouraged by the success of the Tea Ceremony courseware, we have been engaged in developing another Japanese culture courseware. We have decided to develop "Images of Japan" pages on the Web in both English and Japanese. These pages will introduce various topics of Japanese culture which have been selected by gathering data based upon the questionnaire submitted by 75 students of the University of Illinois(UA), 179 students of Dokkyo University(Japan), 12 students of Essex University(UK), and 28 students of Science University of Tokyo(Japan). Furthermore, these pages provide an electronic bulletin board where users are able to input topics of the Japanese culture which they are familiar with and are interested in sharing with others. This system is planned to be used for both Gunji's classes as well as the classes for foreign students at Dokkyo University.