Fumiko Inoue is a teacher of Japanese in the RBS study program Trade Management, focused on Asia. ‘In class, we are too often under the illusion that students get everything once we’ve properly explained the subject matter. Japanese is a difficult language, and I regularly noticed that students had not gotten everything.’

‘Therefore, I started finding out as much as possible on other teaching methods. The thought of creating videos had crossed my mind, but a colleague taught me how to add spoken text to a PowerPoint presentation, and I found that a lot easier. All I needed was a little microphone – like the ones you use for your phone – ear buds, and a computer or laptop, so it’s not all that expensive. That’s how I knocked together my first alternative class.’

Dishwasher
‘In a ‘regular’ class, I gave a 20-minute explanation of grammar, after which we went on to practice for 30 minutes. Now, students study grammar at home with the help of my recorded PowerPoints, and in class, they first practice individually for 10 minutes, and, after that, for 40 minutes as a group. Because of this, knowledge sinks in better, and I manage to speak Japanese rather than Japanese, English, and Dutch during the entire class. That is, of course, also better for the learning process.’

‘I manage to speak Japanese during the entire class now’

‘I used to work some three hours on my first presentations – usually at home, and in the evenings. That is why you can hear sounds of the house in them, such as the rotation of the dishwasher.’
There’s laughter and recognition in the room, as many teachers struggle with the use of new media, and they usually don’t get around to it sooner than in the evening.

Inoue asked her educational manager for extra hours for the development of her digital materials and got these hours. They did not suffice, as all things are difficult before they are easy, but once you’ve created your PowerPoints or videos, you can reuse them, and this investment of time does pay off. ‘Initially, it cost a great deal of time, but it really did make my job more fun, and, more importantly: education benefits from it.’

Greatest advantage for the motivated student
Inoue notices that students experience many advantages, especially the motivated ones among them.
They can ‘attend’ class as often as they want and whenever they want, make good progress by following classes more intensively than they’re offered at school, and reuse the spoken PowerPoint classes when preparing for a test. She observed a very rapid improvement of the speaking skills of most students.

Good students gain even more advantages: they can explain the subject matter to students who did not watch the classes, which enables them to do additional in-depth study.
She also sees disadvantages. Students who did not follow the class at home are lost in the classroom, and if they don’t pull out all the stops to make up arrears, they can’t manage to do so at all. This can create a dichotomy in class.

The first crop of students showed a slightly increased performance in the test.

Inoue has not been working with her digital materials long enough to be able to draw firm conclusions, but the first crop of students showed a slightly increased performance in the test.

And what about the publishers?
During a lively discussion, teachers exchanged knowledge and experience, but the issue of investing time kept being brought up. ‘Why aren’t publishers creating these digital teaching materials for us?’ asked one of those present. ‘Plenty of digital teaching materials are available to students in primary and secondary education.’

That is because in primary and secondary education, schools are buying the books, whereas in higher education, it’s the responsibility of the individual students. Publishers fear that their materials will be duplicated. In primary and secondary education, it is much easier to keep this under control, according to one of those present. And that is why in higher education, teachers take the initiative, not publishers.

One of the teachers present is concerned. There are schools in secondary education that experiment with laptop classes. ‘These children do almost everything digitally. They will be mortally frightened if they go to a university and find a book under their noses in a couple of years. We need to see to it that we won’t miss the connection to the next generation of students. We have to pull out all the stops. We can’t wait any longer.’

Dorine van Namen

This article was originally published in Dutch on December 4, 2014.