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Teaching

​Teaching (2023)

Android App Development, Instructor (Spring Semester)​

Digital Signal Processing, Instructor (Fall Semester)

Introduction to Communication Engineering, Supporting Instructor ​(Spring Semester)

Master Research Projects, Supervisor (Sprint & Fall Semester)

PhD Research Projects, Supervisor (Sprint & Fall Semester)

Undergraduate Capstone Project, Co-Instructor (Spring & Fall Semester)

Undergraduate Cornerstone Projects, Mentor (Spring & Fall Semester)

Introduction to Information and Communication Networks, Supporting Instructor ​(Fall Semester)

Advanced Mechanical Electrical System Engineering, Co-Instructor (Spring & Fall Semester)

System Programming with C Language, Supporting Instructor ​(Spring Semester)

Information Literacy, Supporting Instructor ​(Fall Semester)

Start-up Seminar A/B, Co-Instructor (Spring & Fall Semester)

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My teaching is in line with the ISTE standard (International Society for Technology in Education). My mission is to prepare students to thrive in the Innovation Age by teaching them to think at three levels: 

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WHAT: what is the basic concept?​

SO WHAT: what is its relevance and what is it related to? 

NOW WHAT: what can I do with what I have learned to find solutions to unmet needs?

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I aim to use app development process to help students develop the key competences for 21st-century learners, aka. the ”Four Cs”: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Collaboration.​ I'm also committed to educational research surrounding learning design for integrating technology and incorporating the 4Cs. I combine a variety of learning technologies in my class to enhance students' learning experience and outcomes. 

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Below are some enchanting topics in computing education research that trigger my neurons to fire

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“In every introduction to programming course, 20% of the students just get it effortlessly — you could lock them in a dimly lit closet with a reference manual, and they’d still figure out how to program. 20% of the class never seems to get it.” -- Prof  Mark Guzdial

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“It is not easy to find the right language to explain how I think I am different from the 'touchy feely ... make it fun make it easy' approaches to education... I have no doubt that this kid called the work fun because it was hard rather than in spite of being hard...Doing this requires concentration and discipline. It requires learning to deal with things going wrong by finding out how to fix the problem rather than by giving up in frustration...We are talking here about a special kind of fun ... 'hard fun'."-- Prof Seymour Papert (Co-inventor of Lego programming language )

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“Nervous systems do not form representations of the world, they can only form representations of interactions with the world." -- Prof Edwin Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild.

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Below are some books that fuel up my teaching neurons

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Teaching (Past)

Research Seminar on Ubiquitous Computing, Instructor (Spring & Fall Semester)

Technical Communications in English, Co-Instructor (Spring & Fall Semester)

Web Development in Cloud: Hands-on Lecture for Personal Informatics, Instructor / Sep 2017 - Mar 2019

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Teaching Related Publications

  • Liang Z, Piumarta I. (2023) An Experience Report on English Medium Instruction (EMI) based Computing Education in a Faculty of Engineering in Japan. In Proceedings of the 35th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T 2023), Tokyo, Japan.

  • Liang Z. (2023) Gamifying Digital Signal Processing Learning with Kahoot! Quiz. IEICE General Conference 2023, Oomiya, Japan.

  • Liang Z. (2022) Contextualizing introductory app development course for first-year engineering students. In Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering (TALE 2022), Hong Kong.  SCI   Scopus  

  • Liang Z. (2022) Changes in attitude towards mobile app development: a preliminary comparison between MIT App Inventor and Android Studio. In Proceedings of the 2022 IFIP World Conference on Computers in Education, Hiroshima, Japan.

  • Liang Z, Nishi M, Kishida I. (2021) Teaching Android App Development to First Year Undergraduates: Textual Programming or Visual Programming? In Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering, Wuhan, China.  SCI   Scopus  

  • Liang Z (2021) Teaching Android app development with MIT App Inventor in an English-medium instruction context. In Proceedings of the Annual Autumn Meeting of Japanese Society for Educational Technology, Kumamoto, Japan.

  • Liang Z (2021) Reflection on an English-medium app development course. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of Japanese Society for Educational Technology, Kobe, Japan.

  • Liang Z, da Costa Junior MG, Piumarta I (2020) Opportunities for improving the learning/teaching experience in a virtual online environment. TALE 2020, Takamatsu, Japan.   SCI   Scopus  

  • Liang Z (2020) Student research competition (TALE SRC). In Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering, Takamatsu, Japan.  SCI   Scopus  ​

  • Liang Z (2020) Leveraging ubiquitous learning technologies for collaborative online learning. In Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conf of Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education, Hiroshima, Japan.

  • Liang Z (2020) Engaging students in online virtual classroom using web application Sutori. The 19th IPSJ Forum of Information Technology, Hokkaido, Japan. 

  • Liang Z, Chapa-Martell MA. (2020) Towards the visualization of classroom orchestration. Annual Meeting of The Japanese Society for Educational Technology (JSET), Nagano, Japan.

  • Yun S, Moekoe C, Sirithummarak P, Liang Z. (2020) Leveraging cloud-based learning technologies for developing professional communication skills in a collaborative learning environment. IEICE Society Conference, Tokushima, Japan. (First authors are undergraduate student)

  • Moekoe C, Yun S, Sirithummarak P, Liang Z. (2020)Building Technical Communication Skills of Engineering Students using Authentic Materials and Tasks. IEICE Society Conference, Tokushima, Japan. (First authors are undergraduate student)

  • Smith M, Liang Z, Piumarta I, Tabata O, Takeda K. (2020) Design of faculty development training program for English medium instruction in engineering. Annual Meeting of The Japanese Society for Educational Technology (JSET), Nagano, Japan.

  • Liang Z. (2019) Enhancing active learning in web development classes using pairwise pre-and-post lecture quizzes. In Proceedings of IEEE TALE 2019, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.   SCI   Scopus  

  • Liang Z (2019) Design of a web development attitudes survey. In Proceedings of IEEE TALE 2019, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.   SCI   Scopus 

  • Liang Z, Chapa-Martell MA. (2019) Mitigating resource constraints in web development education using commercial cloud services. The 18th Forum on Information Technology, Okayama, Japan. 

  • Liang Z, Chapa-Martell MA. (2018) A top down approach to teaching web development on cloud. In Proceedings of IEEE TALE 2018, Wollongong, Australia.  SCI   Scopus  

  • Liang Z, Morimura K, Hernandez YA. (2018) Beyond writing code: a new pedagogical model for teaching app development. JSEE Annual Conference International Session Proceedings 2018:10-15. 

  • Liang Z, Morimura K, Hernandez YA. (2017) Empowering globalization of engineering education with open-source e-learning platform and cloud computing technology. JSEE Annual Conference International Session Proceedings 2017. 

  • Hernandez YA, Liang Z, Morimura K. (2017) International communication through Skype for engineering education. JSEE Annual Conference International Session Proceedings 2017. (JSEE International Session Award)

  • Morimura K, Hernandez YA, Liang Z. (2017) M-Skype as a COIL program: collaborative online international learning. JSEE Annual Conference International Session Proceedings 2017.

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Teaching Related Outreach Activities

  • I am a reviewer of the IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies. 

  • I have been serving as a program committee member and reviewer for top-notch conferences on engineering and computing education, including IEEE TALE (2018~), ACM SIGCSE (2019~), ACM CompEd (2019~), ACM ITiCSE (2021~), IEEE EduCon (2021~), and IEEE CSEE&T. 

  • I served on the program committee of the IEEE EDUCON 2023 special session "Learner Engagement Analytics Informed Pedagogy (LEAP)". Submission closed.

  • I served on the program committee of the IEEE EDUCON 2022 special session 'The Evolution of Pedagogic Practices in a  Post-Pandemic Higher Education Landscape (P4HE)'. Submission closed.​

  • I served as a guest associate editor for the special issue "Educational Technologies for Sustainable and Expansive Learning" under the journal IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems. Submission closed.

  • I joined KUASE Dean Prof Tabata to present the progress of our following project in the Higher Education DX Symposium 2021 in July 2021, which is part of the Scheem-D Initiative launched by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT). 

  • I joined KUASE Dean Prof Tabata to present our following proposal in the Scheem-D Initiative launched by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT) in February 2021: BrAIn: Assist, Activate, and Amplify Brain Storming using AI. We are one of the 10 teams selected from 104 submissions.​  We are looking for partners in both academia and industry who are passionate about revolutionizing education with AI technology and are specialized in natural language processing, sentiment analysis, platform development, user interface design, etc . If you are interested please feel free to contact me: liang.zilu[at]kuas.ac.jp (plz replace [at] by @). 

  • I received a Certificate of Appreciation from the IEEE Education Society for serving as a member of the IEEE TALE 2020 Local Organizing Committee. Looking forward to being involved in future IEEE TALE conferences.

  • We successfully organized a special track on “Preparing the Workforce for Industry 4.0: Robotics, Automation, and Ubiquitous Smart Technologies in Education”, in the IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering (TALE) 2020. A summary of the track can be found here. I also served as on the Local Committee and Technical Program Committee of TALE 2020.

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Outreach Activities / Demo Lectures

  • 13 March 2023. I provided a demo lecture to high school girls from the Notre Dame High School. 

  • 22 Aug 2022. I provided  demo lecture to high school girls from the Kyoto Koka Women's High School. 

  • 29 July 2022. I provided  a demo lecture to junior high school students at the Shinagawa Shouei Junior High School in Tokyo.

  • ​28 July 2022. I provided a demo lecture to senior high school students at the Shinagawa Shouei Senior High School in Tokyo.

  • 7 July 2022. I provided a demo lecture to senior high school students from the Kamiichi High School of Toyama Prefecture. 

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Faculty Development​

English Medium Instruction Certificate, The University of Tokyo

In 2020 I completed an online professional development course on Global Englishes and English Medium Instruction provided by the UTokyo English Academia. This course equips university professors with the linguistic knowledge and pedagogical strategies to teach science and engineering subjects using English as a lingua franca in a global context. This involved 10 modules of lectures and quizzes, and 4 discussion forums. 

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Melbourne Teaching Certificate, University of Melbourne

In 2015 I completed the Melbourne Teaching Certificate, a professional development program for staff with teaching responsibilities at the University of Melbourne. This involved 6 face-to-face workshops, a written assignment to reflect on the assessment of a subject, and peer reviews of my teaching activities.

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Tutoring / TA Work (Past)

  • Engineering Computation (C Language Programming) @ University of Melbourne, Jul - Nov 2015

  • Data Visualization @ The University of Tokyo, Oct 2014 –Mar 2015

  • Mathematics @ The University of Tokyo, Apr 2010 –Sep 2013

  • English for Engineers and Scientists @The University of Tokyo, Oct 2010 –Mar 2011

  • Special English Lecture @The University of Tokyo, Oct 2009 –Mar 2010

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