News

2017.06.12

[EPS Type-C] Joint Presentation on the Birthday Project

Under the idea of “Learn to Contribute”, the Course of the EPS Type-C has been conducting PBL (Project-Based Learning) styled seminars which aim to develop English skills of the students through conducting research projects based on their interests and publish the research results in English.

In the second semester of the academic year of 2016, the classes for the first-year students (EPS Project II) conducted the “Birthday Project”. In this project, the students conducted their research projects based on the articles of the Japanese newspapers published in their birthdays around 18 years ago. As research results, they wrote essays in English on social influences, problems, and current situations of a topic/event which appeared in the paper on their birthdays.

The 4 teams of representatives of the 2 classes supervised by Shinya Kosaka, Assistant Professor, and Ayumi Matsunaga, part-time lecturer made presentations in the Joint Presentation on the Birthday Project. In this Joint Presentation, as the first attempt, the international students of the class of CRPS (Community and Regional Policy Studies) supervised by Yo Tabayashi, Professor contributed to the event as facilitators or participants. Both domestic and international students had discussions and exchanged their opinions about the presentations in English.

The 4 teams of representatives from the 2 classes made presentations about 4 different themes: (i) the problems of education in Japan found through the comparison of the results of international examinations of mathematics between Japan and other countries, (ii) the social trajectory of “Baba-shirts”, (iii) the impact of the animation movie “Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime)” on the society of Japan, and (iv) the historical developments of the Halloween.

By the votes of the participants except for each teacher and teams of representatives, the team which made the presentation about the problems of education in Japan (Ms. Moeka Ogura, Ms. Maki Kashiwagi, Ms. Yurika Saito, Mr. Shunyo Takechi, and Mr. Takumi Kuroda) was selected as the winner of the Joint Presentation.

The students of the EPS Type-C courses are now conducting their next projects for pursuing the goal of “Learn to Contribute”.