2023 IE Program Orientation for Teachers

The final version of the 2023 IE Orientation (for teachers) program is here! Apologies for the delay. It took longer this year for everything to coalesce than in previous years. The event will take place this coming Saturday, April 1st from 10 AM but we encourage you to be there by 9:45 AM. It will be a semi-flipped format this time in that some of the presentations will be made available to you through a Vimeo Video Showcase at https://vimeo.com/showcase/9361953  [Ask J. Dias for the password] in advance. You are asked to view the short videos before the orientation as they will serve as springboards for discussion. Note that at the IE Orientation Deborah Bollinger will speak about the importance of career guidance for students and she would like to share a flyer for an upcoming career-related guidance session for 2nd year students and a file on “Job Hunting Activities for New Graduates (update).”

You’ll notice in the attached program that we added a “materials exchange” among IE teachers to the final block of the program. It is hoped that all teachers in the program will actively contribute to this session. It is a way for you to share some of the content or tasks that you personally have developed for use in your IE Program classes with others in the program.

New teachers to the program can feel free to share what they’ve found useful in their previous teaching settings and which they think may be applicable to the IE Program. [Since new teachers do not necessarily understand, at this point, what the levels IE I, II, and III mean in practice, they may note on the materials they contribute CEFR levels A2, B1, B2, or C1, and add the IE course they think the materials would be relevant for.

This is how it the Materials Exchange will work…

The materials exchange session will involve teachers sharing an activity, task, rubric (or variation on existing ones) relevant to IE Core, Writing, Active Listening, Academic Skills, or Academic Writing. Materials that are used in individual IE Seminars or in communications classes (such as Media or Performance Studies) that may be adapted for use in IE classes would also be highly welcome. I have included an example handout that I intend to share (language of poetry). To provide context, please add these labels to the top of the handout, as I have done: 

___________________________________

Context used: 

Level: 

Possible application:

___________________________________

For example:

Context used: IE Seminar on Food Culture (Students were asked to analyze a food-themed poem and apply as many of the poetic terms as possible when discussing it.)

Level: Perhaps better suited to the IE III level

Possible application: Since many of the literary concepts used to analyze and discuss poetry are the same as those used for prose (e.g., perspective, irony, metaphor, motif) it is possible to illustrate them through discussions of poems that correspond to the IE themes.

___________________________________

Handouts to be used for the Materials Exchange Session can be emailed to me with “Sharing” in the subject field no later than this Friday (March 31st), if possible. Attachments in PDF and Word formats would be appreciated. We will have TAs print out the documents for the participants in advance of the session so that everyone can leave with a packet of useful materials. They will be made available to those unable to attend the IE Orientation as well. Teachers contributing the materials might say a few words about them during the session. I think this will be a valuable new format to add to orientations going forward. [Note: Those unable to be present at the orientation can still feel free to contribute materials].

We will be informing you as more videos that will be used in the “flipped” part of the session are added to the Vimeo Showcase: Integrated English Program Tutorials.

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Schedule for 2023 Academic Year

2023 ACADEMIC SCHEDULE in ENGLISH: https://www.aoyama.ac.jp/en/campuslife/academic_calendar.html

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New Format for IE Orientation for Teachers’ Orientation

We held our 2022 IE Program Teachers’ Orientation / 29th Annual Faculty Development Symposium on University English Teaching on Saturday, April 3rd as a HyFlex event with roughly half of the 35 attendees participating in person and the others through Zoom.

The format of the orientation was unique in that 13 veteran instructors were asked to prepare, in advance, videos in which they introduced key aspects of the IE courses they were teaching. Before the day of the orientation, all teachers in the program were asked to watch the videos so they would be prepared to comment on them and give feedback at the orientation itself. We called this the first IE “Flipped” Orientation.

Thanks to the cooperation of the dedicated teachers who spent their precious time sharing their expertise with colleagues through video–and the teachers who conscientiously watched the videos and attended the orientation–the event could be a great success.

The videos provided wonderful springboards and prompts for discussion and the further sharing of experiences and teaching techniques.


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Schedules for 2022 Academic Year

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Successful IE Teachers’ Orientation

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IE Teachers’ Orientation and 28th Annual Faculty Development Symposium on University English Teaching

For the last 28 years, the Integrated English Program (under the auspices of Aoyama Gakuin University’s English Department) has held annual faculty development events for new and continuing teachers in early April. The program’s coordinators, senior teachers, and those newer to the program, share the responsibility of presenting on panels and giving workshops. It has been a way for teachers to share their expertise while gaining knowledge and inspiration from their peers.

This year’s IE Orientation for teachers will features talks by 15 speakers on topics related to issues in online teaching, drama in the classroom, and how to get the most out of discussion, reading, and writing activities.

Click here to see the full schedule in PDF format.

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Academic Schedule: 2021

This is the schedule for the 2021 academic year. Click on image to view PDF. Alternatively, you can download the English version of the schedule that has been prepared by our International Center.

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Revised Spring Term Schedule

This is the revised schedule for the 2020 academic year. The new date for the commencement of the academic year will be May 1st and it will conclude on August 13th. May 4th, 5th, and 6th will not be university holidays, so some teachers may opt to hold “real time” lessons on those days. [Click on image to view PDF.]

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Changes due to COVID-19

We hope that this posting finds you all safe and well. You have probably been wondering about the status of the IE Teachers’ Orientation (which had been scheduled for April 4th), and the start of AGU’s academic year (originally scheduled for Tuesday, April 7th). 

Many of our adjunct lecturers teach at other schools and universities and may have already been notified about delays in the commencement of the academic year. Due to the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic, it has taken some time for AGU to decide whether or not to postpone it.

I’m pleased to announce that a decision has finally been made. First semester classes will start on April 21st. The term will last 13 weeks instead of the usual 15 weeks.

The plan is to have actual face-to-face classes from April 21st, but teachers should make content available to their students online and be prepared to hold classes online as well should that become necessary. Teachers who wish to conduct their classes online will be able to do so. 

Our Joho Media Center has been working hard to try to decide on the best online tools for our needs. Yesterday it was announced that they concluded a contract with Cisco for the use, by all faculty and students, of Webex. It can be used over the Web and the WebEx Mobile app is available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The plan is to somehow integrate the use of Webex with CoursePower, the LMS (Learner Management System) that the university has made available to us for years, but which few of us have ever touched. 

Therefore, not only students, but teachers as well, will be learning new things in novel and, hopefully, wonderful ways.

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The IE Program is on Instagram now!

Find out the latest about IE Program activities and special events by following us on Instagram.

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