Conference Speakers

Prof. Edwin P. Christmann
Slippery Rock University, US

Edwin P. Christmann, professor and chair of the secondary education department and graduate coordinator of Slippery Rock University’s mathematics and science teaching program and earned his Ph.D. at Old Dominion University. He served as a contributing editor to the National Science Teachers Association’s middle schools journal, Science Scope, serves on the editorial review boards of several other research journals, and has authored the books Technology-Based Inquiry for Middle School and Beyond the Numbers: Making Sense of Statistics; and he has coauthored Interpreting Assessment Data: Statistical Techniques You Can Use, Designing Elementary Instruction and Assessment: Using the Cognitive Domain, Designing and Assessing IEP Instruction for Students with Mild Disabilities: Using the Cognitive Domain, and Designing Middle and High School Instruction and Assessment: Using the Cognitive Domain. In addition, he has written over 100 articles and is a frequent speaker at international conferences. He currently teaches graduate-level courses in measurement and assessments, science education, and statistics, which are built on the foundation of his math and science experiences.

Title: A Comparison of Online and Face-To-Face Instruction

This research compared the achievement of male and female students who were enrolled in an online univariate statistics course to students enrolled in a traditional face-to-face univariate statistics course. The subjects, 47 graduate students enrolled in univariate statistics classes at a public, comprehensive university, were randomly assigned to groups that used either online instruction or traditional face-to-face instruction. The effects of the independent variables of online univariate statistics instruction versus traditional face-to-face instruction on the dependent variable of statistics achievement were analyzed with a two-way analysis of variance. There was a significant difference between the achievement of students who used online univariate statistics instruction and those who used traditional face-to-face instruction (p = .001). The traditional face-to-face group scored higher with an effect size of 0.979, indicating that, on the average, those who were enrolled in a traditional face-to-face univariate statistics class outperformed 83.4% of those enrolled in the online statistics course. Moreover, females using online instruction outperformed males using online instruction and males enrolled in a traditional face-to-face course scored higher than females, with an effect size of 0.651, indicating that, on the average, those males outperformed 74.22% of the females enrolled in a traditional face-to-face statistics course.

Assoc. Prof. Mizuho Iinuma, Tokyo University of Technology, japan

Mizuho Iinuma, Ed.D, is an accomplished Associate Professor and Doctor of Education at Tokyo University of Technology in Japan. With a strong academic background and extensive research experience, she has made significant contributions to the fields of international educational development, educational technology, and social design. Dr. Iinuma's work focuses on utilizing technology and collaborative learning methods to enhance education and promote social change.
Dr. Iinuma earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from BA. Scripps College, Claremont Colleges in 1997. She then pursued further studies at Columbia University, Teachers College, where she completed her Master of Arts in 1999, Master of Education in 2001, and Doctor of Education in 2004.
Currently, Dr. Iinuma holds the position of Associate Professor at Tokyo University of Technology's Department of Media Sciences since 2012. She is actively engaged in research and is a Vice Chairman of Japan MOT's Social Design Committee.
Dr. Iinuma's research interests encompass international educational development, educational technology, and social design. She has made significant contributions to these fields through her publications and conference papers. Her English publications include articles on topics such as using social design notebooks with digital platforms in a museum setting and the application of geospatial technology in the classroom and collaborative learning. She has also authored books such as "Learning and Teaching with Technology in the Knowledge Society: New Literacy, Collaboration, and Digital Content."(2016) Springer. 
Dr. Iinuma has been invited as a keynote speaker and panelist at various conferences and symposiums, where she has shared her expertise and insights. She has also received research grants and awards for her outstanding work, including grants from the Hayao Nakayama Foundation for Science & Technology and Culture and the Keio University Research Grant.
With her wealth of knowledge and expertise, Dr. Mizuho Iinuma continues to contribute to the field of education through her research, teaching, and involvement in social design initiatives

Title: A Case Study of Social Design Parent and Child Program for Sustainable Development in Japan

This is a case study of a program developed and implemented for families with elementary school children in Japan. The program incorporated social design into parent child program for sustainable development and utilized combined analog and digital learning materials. A total of thirty seven families participated in the case study. The outcome of the case study indicates that although social design may still be seen as part of a field of study for students of design, it can be used as a teaching approach to motivate participants of all ages. Social Design approach with some alteration can contribute to wider learners from children to adults.

Assoc. Prof. Li Jianwei
Beijing University Of Posts and Telecommunications, China

Li Jianwei is an Associate Professor at Faculty of Network Education in Beijing University of Posts and telecommunications,Visiting Scholar of Marist College,Member of Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence.He has published more than 30 papers in journals and conferences such as Distance Education in China, Modern Educational Technology and China Educational Technology etc. His research has been supported by the grants from Ministry of Education and Ministry of Science and Technology. His research interests include adaptive learning, learning analytics and intelligent educational environment and technology.

Title: Automated Essay Scoring Incorporating Multi-level Semantic Features

Essay writing might reveal the language proficiency of a student. Utilizing intelligent technology to automatically grade essays is an effective method of saving significant manpower and time resources, and improving the accuracy of score. The present models typically rely on shallow semantic features, deep semantic features and multi-level semantic features. Existing models, however, struggle to be superior in both scoring accuracy and generalization performance. As a result, we propose a model that incorporates multi-level semantic features. Specifically, we manually define and automatically extracted the shallow semantic features; we use the BERT pre-training model, convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks to extract the deep semantic features; and last, feature fusion is used to score essay automatically. The proposed model outperforms three state-of-the-art baseline methods, according to experimental results on two datasets. Additionally, the generalization of the model has been greatly enhanced. The study has a significant impact on automated essay scoring theoretical investigations and practical applications

 Assoc. Prof. Sarimah Shamsudin
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia

Dr. Sarimah Shamsudin is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with more than 25 years of teaching experience. She obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Mathematics from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, Post-Graduate Diploma in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) from the Institute of Technology MARA, Malaysia, Masters of Science in Teaching English for Specific Purposes (TESP) from Aston University, Birmingham, UK and PhD in English Language Teaching (ELT) and Applied Linguistics from The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. Her PhD thesis was on Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP): An Investigation of the Use of Synchronous CMC to Meet the Needs of Computer Science Students. She has presented papers at international conferences in various countries and published papers in indexed and non-indexed journals and conference proceedings. Apart from that, she has had experience obtaining funds to set up and manage Digital Language Labs in UTM Johor Bahru and Kuala Lumpur and conducting research related to English language learning and teaching using technology, development of corpus-based materials, and corpus-based analysis of discourse. She is also continuously invited to review journal articles and conference papers both locallyand abroad and has successfully supervised more than ten Ph.D students who graduated with a PhD from UTM. Her research interests are in the areas of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Corpus Linguistics, English Language Teaching (ELT) and English for Specific Purpose (ESP).

Title: Web-Based Digital Tool: A Way Forward for Synchronous and Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communicative Language Learning

During the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, institutions of higher learning were forced to shut down and physical classes were prohibited to curb the spread of the virus. It initiated lecturers and instructors all over the world to start learning and using web-based digital tools to teach their students online. This phenomenon still continues in this COVID-19 endemic period whereby lecturers, including language instructors are beginning to blend their physical classes with online ones via web-based digital tools such as Padlet. Padlet is a digital notice board that is accessible online with features that enable its user to post texts, images, links, audios, videos, documents and comments, as well as interact on a shared “wall” at the same time or at different times. In order words, it affords both synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communication (SAS CMC). This paper therefore aims to report a group of undergraduate students’ feedback of their experience using Padlet for synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communicative English language learning. Three themes which emerged from analysis of their written responses are usability, experience and usefulness in which majority of them gave positive comments with reference to the themes. Hence, it can be concluded that web-based digital tools such as Padlet has the potential to enable SAS CMC, increase language learners’ interest and motivation to learn the target language and eventually improve their competency in the language.

 Asst. Prof. Kazuya Kito
 Josai University, Japan

Kazuya Kito is an Assistant Professor at the Language Education Center in Josai University, specializing in TESOL. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in Policy Management from Keio University, where he studied bilingualism and human ergonomics using eye-tracking devices. During his senior year, he presented his research at the European Conference on Visual Perception in La Coruna, Spain.
After completing his undergraduate program, he pursued his Master's degree in Science in Education, TESOL at Temple University, Japan campus. During his Master's program, he conducted motivation research on high school and undergraduate students. He has since taught at Utsunomiya University and other private universities before joining Josai University.
His current research focuses on using ICT in English classes and teaching communication. Since he is also an authorized Educational Testing Service or ETS’ teacher trainer, he has extended his research to apply them to practical usage in teacher training programs at prefectural and city-wide Board of Education programs, as well as teaching students to prepare for study abroad programs in high schools and universities.
He is an active member of the Japan Association for Language Education and Technology (LET), serving as a secretary general and board of director member. He is dedicated to promoting and educating new teachers to become better researchers.

Title: Teaching English through AI with Ideas Drawn from the Past

With the recent advancements in technologies like ChatGPT and similar generative AI tools, English Education is on the brink of a new paradigm shift. Summaries, paraphrases, and essays can now be effortlessly generated using these tools. As language teachers, we are concerned about whether these tools are simply enabling mass cheating or if they can be useful for both teachers and students. To explore this issue, I will refer to "Tools for Conviviality," a book by Ivan Illich. Although written in 1973, it provides a solid foundation for contemplating how to navigate the world of technology.
In line with the principles outlined in "Tools for Conviviality," we can also draw insights from "Calm Technology" by Amber Case when considering the integration of technology into our lives and classrooms. Case suggests that technology should inform and create a sense of calm. It should amplify the best aspects of both technology and humanity, and only the minimum amount of technology necessary should be used to solve a problem. These two resources can assist us in making informed decisions about whether to implement specific technologies in our classrooms.
Keeping these ideas in mind, I would like to propose the use of Communication Models with AI prompts. Lastly, I will present some use cases of AI in language teaching. The use of Communication Models can assist teachers and students in creating effective AI prompts for better results. Through these use cases, I hope you will gain valuable insights into teaching language using AI tools in preparation for the upcoming paradigm shift.