Tokyo Tech has been offering online courses, or MOOCs*, available to anyone on the internet since October 2015. In April 2023, a new MOOC, “,” was released through edX, an online course platform.
, an edX MOOC, was released in 2019 and has been studied by thousands of learners. This new course covers Japanese laws that are closely related to every-day life, such as contracts, property, labor, and family, in English. The course is intended to allow learners to deepen their understanding of Japanese laws and society, as well as learn about contemporary issues related to laws, such as copyright, personal information protection, liability of artificial intelligence, and protection of the elderly. Tokyo Tech encourages particularly international residents in Japan or those aiming to study or work in Japan to learn about the law through this new MOOC.
Associate Professor Hironao Kaneko of the Institute for Liberal Arts, who developed this new online course, explains, “In the previous MOOC, Basic Japanese Civil Law, released in 2019, we received questions from students in many countries and regions, and realized that they are highly interested in Japanese law. We updated this course by implementing law amendments up to 2021 to provide students with the latest information. Furthermore, this new MOOC includes advanced themes such as the internet, artificial intelligence, and aging society and law. We hope that more people outside Tokyo Tech learn about changes in Japanese law and society by studying this MOOC produced with the full support of Tokyo Tech’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL). This online course can also be studied by Tokyo Tech undergraduate and graduate-level students who are learning law for the first time.”
Anyone can access this MOOC free of charge at the following website. Tokyo Tech invites everyone to take this opportunity to learn more about the online classes on offer in both English and Japanese.
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MOOC
Massive Open Online Courses are open to anyone with internet access and free of charge. Since the launch of the first major MOOC platform in 2012, this format of teaching and learning has increased explosively. In 2021, some 19,400 MOOCs were being offered by over 950 universities and higher education institutions. At Tokyo Tech, the Online Content Research and Development Section within CITL is in charge of MOOC creation. The Institute provides its MOOCs on the edX platform under the name .