Tsuneo Yamada

• Professor (Full) at The Open University of Japan

In the next-generation engineering education, various digital transformation (DX) will be planned and realized by using innovative technologies. One of the fundamental factors is data collaboration among educational information systems based on advanced interoperability and refined technical standards. In this paper, focusing on the behaviors to le...

The primary purpose of this research report was to investigate the relationships between acoustic characteristics and perceived intelligibility for native Japanese speakers’ productions of American English liquids. This report was based on a reanalysis of intelligibility scores and acoustic analyses that were reported in two previous studies. We ex...

The book contains best practices of ODL in AAOU member institutions

We developed a three-level template for education and learning data usage policy in Japan and published it on the Academic eXchange for Information Environment and Strategy website. We found that clarifying the purpose of use and obtaining subjects’ consent are central to education and learning data usage, including personal information, and there...

This study examined productions of three English voiceless fricatives (/f θ s/) produced by native Japanese (NJ) and native English (NE) adults and children (16 participants each in 4 groups). The purpose of this study was to investigate acoustic characteristics of these fricative productions that were evaluated using intelligibility ratings in Aoy...

Understanding learning analytics from a socio-constructivist pedagogical perspective implies the design and use of learning analytics to inform decision-making, so teachers, as relevant stakeholders, can create richer educational experiences. We focus on the learning analytics module facilitated by OpenEdX and implemented, in an early stage yet, by...

While large scale online courses such as MOOCs are popular in developed countries, their dissemination is difficult in developing countries due to internal barriers such as poverty, internet accessibility, and the low PC ownership ratio. External barriers, such as lack of information technology knowledge and insufficient skills, also exist. Our Hig...

The JICA Partnership Program “Disaster awareness enlightenment project for large-scale natural disasters caused by global environmental change in Khovd Province, Mongolia” was adopted in March 2017 and practically started in August 2017. It was implemented by Nagoya University. The Open University of Japan collaborates in producing contents for the...

This study investigated the acoustic properties of American English /r/ and /l/ produced by native Japanese (NJ) and native English (NE) speakers. The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in production reported in Aoyama et al. (2004) acoustically. Aoyama et al. evaluated productions of /r/ and /l/ in 64 NE and NJ adults and childre...

In this paper, video annotation tool for learning job interview is proposed. To visualize the difference of obtained descriptions, the proposed tool uses correspondence analysis. The results of correspondence analysis are used to give feedback to learners. By the results, the learner can understand the characteristics of his/her descriptions among...

This study investigated the acoustic properties of American English /ɹ/ and /l/ produced by native Japanese (NJ) and native English (NE) speakers. The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in production reported in Aoyama et al. (2004) acoustically. Aoyama et al. evaluated productions of /ɹ/ and /l/ in 64 NE and NJ adults and childre...

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have triggered the innovations of pedagogies and learning methods in all levels of education. In addition to distance education, e-Learning is expected to improve classroom teaching through educational tools and digital content in various blended approaches; Mobile devices and SNS showed the new con...

Worldwide activities on open access have triggered many universities to operate institutional repositories (IRs). The National Institute of Informatics (NII) has led a Japanese IR project since 2014 and, developing homegrown repository software named WEKO as a module for the content management system NetCommons (NC). Concepts of WEKO are “High Func...

Online education has provided good opportunities for educationally disadvantaged people. However, some traditional learning management systems (LMSs), the base systems of online education, had the limitations in offering standardized education for diversified learners with different skills, objectives, abilities, preferences, and backgrounds. In ad...

While higher education rapidly grows worldwide, regional differences widen the digital divide. Our Creative Higher Education with Learning Objects (CHiLO), an e-book-based learning platform, aims to provide opportunities in higher education for developing countries or rural areas that have restricted digital literacy, digital devices, learning reso...

Open education offers higher education opportunities for underprivileged communities and solves the problem of deficit in learning resources, such as human and material resources, throughout developing countries. Open education, however, has certain challenges in terms of dependency on the Internet. The use of mobile devices is expected to aid in m...

With the development of social network services (SNS) on the Internet, the world has gained access to vast amounts of information resources, allowing people to carefully research and select what they need and want to share with others. The main idea behind open educational resources (OER) is providing freely accessible and openly licensed documents...

Conventional learning management systems that focus on traditional claßrooms do not fit many-participant online courses such as maßive open online courses (MOOCs). A learning platform, Creative Higher Education with Learning Objects (CHiLO) based on e-textbooks aims to develop a flexible learning environment for large-scale online courses. CHiLO eß...

In this research, new questionnaire was developed to measure judgmental and behavioral aspects of information ethics by asking students to give responses to unethical use of computers and the internet. Four hundred and thirteen undergraduate students were answered the developed questionnaire. Relationships of measured information ethics with gender...

Open Educational Resources (OER) – that is, teaching, learning and research materials that their owners make free to others to use, revise and share – offer a powerful means of expanding the reach and effectiveness of worldwide education. Those resources can be full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, software, and othe...

The effect of age of acquisition on first- and second-language vowel production was investigated. Eight English vowels were produced by Native Japanese (NJ) adults and children as well as by age-matched Native English (NE) adults and children. Productions were recorded shortly after the NJ participants' arrival in the USA and then one year later. I...

Welcome to the Open Education Resources survey which aims to identify the current state of play in the Asian Region with respect to OER practice. This survey mainly concentrates on, but not limited to, the current situation in Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Japan, China and Hong Kong. The main objective of this study is to establ...

In order to sustain the development and utilization of learning content under the limited financial and human resources, the sharing and reuse of open educational resources (OERs) have been promoted in various school levels and disciplines. In many countries, central organization(s) collect both learning content and its metadata, and provide them t...

The effect of age of acquisition on first‐ and second‐language vowel production was investigated. Eight English vowels were produced three times in two different words each by 16 native Japanese (NJ) adults and children as well as 16 age‐matched native English (NE) speaking adults. Productions were recorded shortly after the NJ participants’ arriva...

The explosive growth of computer networking enormously increases security costs. It is necessary to encourage the cooperation of students, faculty, and staff through education and training of information ethics, together with improving management and technologies, for security and to reduce university costs. We produced two collections of video cli...

This study examined Japanese speakers' learning of American English dur-ing their first years of immersion in the United States (U.S.). Native Japanese-speaking (NJ) children (n=16) and adults (n=16) were tested on two occasions, averaging 0.5 (T1) and 1.6 years (T2) after arrival in the U.S. Age-matched groups of native English-speaking children (...

In sports, onomatopoeia is often used to express and convey power and degree of muscle tension of movements to other players. And from experiences, the use of onomatopoeia is considered effective in sport coaching. The research reported in this paper was designed to evaluate the kind of effects F_0 stimulation (Basic Frequencies of Onomatopoeia) ca...

Texture analysis is important in 2D image classification, recognition, segmentation and detection. Although a significant amount of work has been done on 2D image data analysis, techniques for analyzing 3D volume data such as 3D solid textures have not been investigated sufficiently. In this research, we have extended the well-known Laws' texture e...

Mask patterns based on higher order local autocorrelation (HLAC) have been used for various 2D image recognition and classification systems. Recently, research related to extended 2D HLAC mask patterns has shown that the use of mask patterns improves classification rates for certain 2D textures. We have applied a similar extension approach to 3D HL...

Similarity retrieval techniques for 3D models have been intensively investigated the last few years. The purpose has been to improve precision of the similarity retrievals, and as a result various types of shape descriptors have been proposed. Several shape descriptors use the bounding box of a 3D model during a shape descriptor extraction process,...

We conducted a study on the actual situation and the survey of needs of onomatope to develop a computerized onomatope dictionary, which is effective for motor learning. We determined that onomatope is widely used among various sports and has multifaceted effects on entire learning. Then, we manufactured a trial product using the database of onomato...

We produced a digital video on computer ethics for use in higher education. The purpose of the video is to help students learn what kinds of incidents they might encounter and how to cope with them in cyber space. The video contains twenty clips that depict the daily life of three students in a Japanese university. These clips are classified into f...

Previous research has demonstrated that English /r/ is perceptually more dissimilar from Japanese /r/ than English /l/ is for native Japanese (NJ) speakers. It has been proposed by the Speech Learning Model that the more distant an L2 sound (phonetic segment) is from the closest L1 speech sound, the more learnable the L2 sound will be (in: W. Stran...

This study examined the pronunciation of English words produced by 16 native Japanese (NJ) adults and 16 NJ children living in the United States and groups of age-matched native English (NE) controls (16 each). Recordings were made twice, one year apart (Time 1, Time 2). The NJ participants had lived in the United States for 0.5 years at Time 1. Wo...

This study examined the production and perception of English fricatives by native Japanese (NJ) adults and children (16 per group, mean age=40 and 10 years), and age‐matched native English (NE) adults and children (16 per group). The subjects were tested two times (T1, T2) 1 year apart. (At T1, the NJ subjects’ mean length of residence in the U.S....

This study examined the production and perception of English fricatives by native Japanese (NJ) adults and children (16 per group, mean age=40 and 10 years), and age-matched native English (NE) adults and children (16 per group). The subjects were tested two times (T1, T2) 1 year apart. (At T1, the NJ subjects' mean length of residence in the U.S....

This study examined perception and production of English consonants by native Japanese (NJ) adults and children (16 subjects in each group, mean age=39.9 and 9.9 years). The subjects were tested 2 times (T1, T2), when their mean lengths of residence in the U.S. were 0.5 years and 1.6 years. Age‐matched native English (NE) controls (16 adults, 16 ch...

To examine the effect of aging on second‐language (L2) learning, Japanese speakers of various ages, from 40s to 60s, were trained to identify American English /r/ and /l/ in a minimal pair identification task used in Lively et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 96, 2076–2087 (1994)]. Pretest–post‐test design was administered in which the effect of the traini...

A previous study [Erickson, Akahane‐Yamada, Tajima, and Matsumoto, Proceedings of ICPhS (1999)] showed that Japanese listeners have difficulty correctly counting the number of syllables in spoken English words, presumably because Japanese syllable structure is more restricted than English. A complex syllable like ‘‘stress’’ is not allowed in Japane...

Monolingual speakers of Japanese were trained to identify English /r/ and /l/ using Logan et al.'s [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 874-886 (1991)] high-variability training procedure. Subjects' performance improved from the pretest to the post-test and during the 3 weeks of training. Performance during training varied as a function of talker and phonetic...

Monolingual native speakers of Japanese were trained to identify English /r/ and /l/ using a modified version of Logan, Lively, and Pisoni?s [J. S. Logan et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 874?886 (1991)] high variability training procedure. Both the talker?s voice and the phonetic environment were varied during training. Subjects improved in their ab...

The responses of neurons in field L in the auditory neostriatum of the mynah bird, Gracula religiosa, were recorded during presentation of intact or manipulated mimic voices. A typical mimic voice konnichiwa elicited responses in most of the neurons. Neurons in the input layer (L2) of field L showed many peaks on peristimulus time histograms while...

A microcomputer-based system for the recording and analysis of the auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) was developed. A software system consists of three parts. (1) Measurement of the AEPs : By the use of the A/D converter with DMA interface and the D/A converter with internal clock, the AEPs are recorded while acoustic stimuli are being presented. T...

Intracranial and epicranium recordings of the average evoked potentials in response to acoustic clicks were conducted using the hill mynah. Records under some experimental conditions and tests after monaural lesion show that these potentials are in fact brain stem auditory evoked potentials (BAEPs). A typical waveform of the mynahs'BAEPs is compose...

The use of 3D models is gaining popularity since they are important for computer graphics applications. Recently, similarity retrieval techniques for 3D models have been in-vestigated intensively for handling databases of 3D mod-els systematically. The techniques extract shape descrip-tors from 3D models and use these descriptors for indices for co...

This paper describes a pattern recognition technique for voxel data based on 3D HLAC (Higher order Local Autocorrelation) masks. HLAC has been used as feature descriptors for various pattern recognition applications including gesture recognition, face recognition, and 2D image retrieval. In this research, popular 2D HLAC masks are extended to 3D HL...