Educational material developed for the Department of Language and Literature, Chinese Literature.

At ICER campus we develop and support the use of digital educational material by professors in lectures etc. on campus. On this occasion, we carried out activities in cooperation with P&P (Interdisciplinary Programs in Education and Projects in Research Development) and EEP (Enhanced Education Program).

This project was carried out as part of the Department of Languages and Literature's EEP: 'Arts Discipline subject textbook and supplemental materials development: With the goal of making the Humanities curriculum more substantial'.

In this project, we worked together with Professor Takeshi Shizunaga of the Faculty of Humanities, to create educational materials which would enable students to get a better understanding of Chinese Literature.

The students would not only be learning the stories by reading from paper media, but could watch through 3D animation the actions and behaviors of characters involved. This would give them a better understanding and also help to develop their interest in the subject matter.

We had discussions about 'What type of 3D animations would be most effective for improving learning?' with Professor Shizunaga and his research lab staff and students.

This is shown in the photo below.

Project Members

Takeshi Shizunaga, Professor, Faculty of Humanities
Shintaro Okuno, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities
Masashi Hasegawa, Research Specialist, Faculty of Humanities
Makoto Gangi, D3, Graduate School of Humanities
Masahiro Kuriyama, Research Specialist, Faculty of Humanities
Yukiko Tanemura. Research Specialist, Faculty of Humanities

Yoshihiro Okada, Dorector/Professor, ICER
Kousuke Kaneko, Assistant Professor, ICER
Saki Nakazono, Technical Staff, ICER
Daichi Komori, B4, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Activity Summary

2015

In 2015, we decided to work on expressing scenes used in High school Chinese literature, such as "Feast at Hong Gate".

We would work to express these in 3D, developing them into 3D interactive digital materials. We developed a prototype version using the game development engine 'Unity', after which it was planned to use 'WebGL' to make a web browser version. Our completed version would be non-browser specific.

We decided not to focus on giving the characters realistic clothes and making realistic buildings, instead we would focus our efforts on making software that would be the most effective method of improving students Chinese Literature learning.

Meetings etc.

April 16th(Thursday) 16:30-18:00, Meeting to discuss setting the theme. Decided on 'Feast at Hong Gate'.
May 18th(Monday) 15:00-16:30, 'Feast at Hong Gate' educational material content draft meeting. Set content policy.
June 15th(Monday) 15:00-17:00, 'Feast at Hong Gate' material progress development report and discussion.
July 6th(Monday) 15:00-16:00, 'Feast at Hong Gate' material progress developments report and discussion.(Start of the prototype development)
August 10th(Monday) 15:00-16:00, 'Feast at Hong Gate' material progress developments report and discussion.(Prototype modification)
September 14th(Monday) 15:00-16:00, 'Feast at Hong Gate' material progress developments report and discussion.(Prototype modification)
October 19th(Monday) 15:00-16:00 'Feast at Hong Gate' material progress developments report and discussion.(Prototype modification). Creation of project homepage.