The Center is a facility for collaborative education and research within our university. We aim to support improvements in the quality of the University of Tokyo’s education and research, as well as the development of our university’s global education innovation. To accomplish this, we are promoting the following projects.
OpenCourseWare (OCW) is an online publication of lecture materials and videos used in the regular courses of universities and other higher education institutions for free. The University of Tokyo began the activity in 2005, and since then has provided lecture materials and videos used in the regular courses for free to anyone including those outside the University.
UTokyo TV offers videos of events such as UTokyo Open Lectures, open campus events, symposiums, and workshops. These videos are open to the public for free.
Some videos including training programs are limited to UTokyo staff and students.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are courses shared on the Internet that people can take inexpensively or free of charge. Participants from across the world carry out their studies through class videos, online tests, and other methods.
UTokyo is the first to launch courses on Coursera in Japan, starting with two, and now offers courses on both Coursera and edX.
The UTokyo eLF shares education and research resources with people inside and outside the University so that they can use them as learning materials. The materials are not limited to lecture videos and materials viewable online; the UTokyo eLF is an online learning management system that allows teachers/instructors to use functions such as managing users, conducting/grading short quizzes, and adding up the results.
The University of Tokyo has set out the following philosophy for faculty development:
“To carry out faculty development on multiple levels and with multiple participants (including individual faculty members, university departments, and university colleges), acknowledging that this is an on-going and organization-wide effort aiming for a superior learning environment and the creating of learning opportunities, given our status as a globally recognized leading university.”
We have run a program to help graduate students who aim to become faculty members acquire skills and knowledge related to teaching at university since AY2013. This half-yearly program is also offered as a Common Graduate Course titled “Teaching Development in Higher Education.” It provides a learning environment for graduate students where they can learn in an active-learning style while building up a network across diverse research fields.
UTokyo Faculty Development (FD) in English encompasses the group of initiatives offered in English by the Center for Research and Development of Higher Education aiming to support the educational development of those who teach or aim to teach at university level. These initiatives, at present, involve two main programs focused on the development of teaching competences.
We have offered an online FD program “Interactive Teaching” since 2014. It is a project to contribute to society, carried out with the support and cooperation of the Japan Center for Educational Research and Innovation. This program consists of practical materials to help the participants enhance their teaching skills and was taken by over 7,000 people both inside and outside of the university in AY2014.
We offer consultation services on teaching, including reviewing class designs, syllabi, and curriculums, starting new programs, and more.
Please feel free to contact us on any topics such as the improvement of syllabi, how to adopt new classroom methods, and FD training.
UTokyo Online Course Catalogue is a system that enables users to look over more than 10,000 regular courses of the University of Tokyo, search for courses, and explore the relationship between them.
UTokyo navi gathers and delivers information about various events held by the departments and institutes of the University of Tokyo. In addition to providing information on educational events, it also helps you enrich your everyday life on campus by recommending locations inside and outside of the university and introducing internal university services.
These language programs aim to ensure that the active skills (writing, reading) needed for globalization are more than just simple communication tools—our goal is for participants to gain logical construction of thought and speech and to hold discussions on the same level as a native speaker.