Working on the Senior Thesis

I am not sure how common this is in the other universities but here, our students have to write a final senior thesis before they can graduate. Of course, in English. This year I got some students who, for different reasons, could not take their first class on how to write their thesis. As usual most of them were assigned to me, so teaching this class what good for two reasons: first, students have to learn the basics before writing Read More …

Online Security Presentation

It was a rainy Sunday yesterday and there I was, in downtown Miyazaki, to do a presentation about online security. This is not my usual type of talk, and to be honest, it was quite challenging. The audience was small (less than 20 people) with ages ranging from 20 to 60 (as far as I can tell). I was not really sure about how much the attendees knew about technology so creating the presentation made me a little bit nervous. Read More …

About students and horses

Oh my… it looks like a joke, but the last time I posted something here was… an year ago!!! I (and everyone else around me) have been very busy preparing for the new academic year. A new curriculum, graduate school prep, and of course all the normal work that we do at the college everyday running in parallel. It is really interesting how life happens and, suddenly, posting on my personal page looses its priority. In 2021 I worked really Read More …

2nd year students’ orientation

Today it was the first orientation session before the semester starts. Second year students came to campus, in the big auditorium, and we had many people from the administration speaking to them. Of course today’s main menu was the explanation about the study abroad program. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, we were unable to send our second year students to their abroad program, and almost all students were waiting for the announcements in order to know what is going to Read More …

Open Campus

And we did it. July 19th was our open campus, and although we are all suffering from the coronavirus pandemic, it was nice to see so many high school students joining us. Of course, precautions were taken to make sure everyone had an enjoyable experience while keeping the coronavirus away. Students, staff and faculty were using alcohol on their hands when entering and leaving the rooms; Everyone were using masks at all times and instructors were offered face-shields (in addition Read More …

Senior Thesis Management

After thinking a lot about how to manage the thesis grades of our students, I have decided to use a course in Moodle. It seems as a natural choice since all our instructors and students have access to it. To avoid confusion, I am planning to split students into groups depending on their advisor, what will allow faculty to see their tutees directly. As a side effect, we get fast feedback to students and better visibility for administration. I am Read More …

Classes to start on April 20 (online)

That’s right, classes were pushed to April 20 and we will officially start it online. We will be doing it for a month and see how the corona virus situation develops. We are all working really hard to make sure we can offer good classes to our students. Many faculty members are running workshops and getting together (online) to discuss and learn how to use new tools and adapt their activities.

Second year of the ARC program

One month into the new year, and students are already making use of the ARC. Our assistant is working hard on the new TOEIC workshops and the schedule should be available soon by email to all students. For more information about the program, here is the official page: https://www.mic.ac.jp/student/ARC