Keywords

1 Introduction

Although the importance of intellectual property education within engineering departments is widely recognized [1, 2], engineering departments are unable to spend a sufficient amount of time on intellectual property education due to the fact that classes that are part of students’ majors (and laboratory classes, in particular) take up large amounts of time [3]. The engineering department at university A offers a 30-h class on intellectual property law that is worth two units. However, due to time constraints, it is difficult to cover material related to applications of intellectual property law. Therefore, we developed and operated an e-learning system (referred to as simply the “system” in the following) based on a blended-learning approach that includes material on applications of intellectual property law intended to serve as a supplement to the material presented in classes. The system includes a recorded video of a face-to-face class that students can watch and also allows students to work on practice problems related to the video.

In this paper, we first describe the system that we developed and operated. Next, we analyze the results from the 2017 class to determine the approximate amount of time that students spent using the system, the ways that students used the system, and the relationship between system usage and knowledge acquisition among engineering students who were enrolled in the intellectual property law class. Next, we investigate which types of system features are useful for which kinds of knowledge acquisition. We also discuss the types of features that should be added to the system in the future and the types of usage methods that should be promoted.

2 Blended Learning System

2.1 System Overview

The class on intellectual property law offered by the engineering department at university A includes 6 h of lectures covering basic knowledge of the law and the Japanese legal system, 2 h of lectures on the Intellectual Property Act, 6 h of lectures on the Patent Act, 2 h of lectures on the Utility Model Act, 2 h of lectures on the Design Act, 4 h of lectures on the Trademark Act, 6 h of lectures on the Copyright Act, and a 2-h midterm exam. The lectures were all recorded on video, which was used as the core of the blended learning system. Recording the lectures on video allows students to watch the videos in the event that they miss class or want to review the material after attending class. Therefore, the main purpose of the system was to supplement learning. Furthermore, the system also provided a way for students who wished to go beyond the content delivered during the lectures to work on practice problems. Therefore, a secondary purpose of the system was to provide opportunities for practice based on the material in the lecture and opportunities for learning advanced material.

When students log in to the system through the login page, the system shows the home page (Fig. 1). When students select the learning content, the system shows the content list screen, after which students can access the lecture videos, pdf-format files of quizzes that were given during the lectures, and practice problem pages (Fig. 2). The system allows students to fast-forward and rewind the lecture videos (Fig. 3) as well as zoom-in to the video by clicking on the screen. For example, left-clicking on the location indicated by the arrow in Fig. 4 will zoom the video (Fig. 5). Furthermore, right-clicking will cause the system to display the class evaluation screen. In addition, the system also includes a variety of practice problems (Fig. 6). If the student answers incorrectly on a practice problem, the system will display a hint (Fig. 7), and if the student answers correctly, the system will display an explanation (Fig. 8).

Fig. 1.
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Home page (publishes updates and syllabus, etc.)

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Fig. 2.
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Content selection screen

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Fig. 3.
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Lecture video screen

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Fig. 4.
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Before zooming

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Fig. 5.
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After zooming

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Fig. 6.
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Practice problem screen

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Fig. 7.
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Feedback screen (in the case of an incorrect answer)

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Fig. 8.
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Feedback screen (in the case of a correct answer)

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2.2 Usage of the System

System Access.

Figure 9 shows a graph of the amount of traffic to the system on days for which at least one user accessed the system. In 2017, the number of students who took the final exam was 30 students. 22 students accessed the system at least one time, and 8 students did not access the system even once. The total number of times that the system was accessed was 93 times. The student who accessed the system the most accessed the system 12 times. Here, “access” refers to instances in which students used the system to watch videos or do practice problems, and does not include instances in which students only printed pdf files. Furthermore, situations in which the same student accessed the system multiple times in one day are counted as only one access in the results above. Since the midterm exam was held on May 29, traffic to the system increased around this time. In addition, the final exam was held on August 7. Accessing the system was completely voluntary for the students and was not compulsory. The results show that the students used the system relatively frequently.

Fig. 9.
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History of number of students who accessed the system

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System Use Time.

Table 1 shows the total numbers of hours that students spent watching videos and the total number of hours that students spent using the practice problem system. The student who spent the largest amount of time watching videos spent 20 h, 37 min, and 24 s watching videos. Similarly, the student who spent the largest amount of time using the practice problem system spent 4 h, 55 min, and 25 s using the system.

Table 1. Total amount of system access time
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Table 2 shows the correlation between the number of hours students spent using the system and their final knowledge attainment (which was evaluated only in terms of their test scores, and did not include attendance or scores on practice problems given during lectures; referred to as “test scores” in the following).

Table 2. Correlation between the number of hours students spent using the system and their test scores
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In all categories, there was a somewhat weak positive correlation. In addition, we also compared the amount of time students with high test scores and students with low test score spent using the system. Among the 30 students who enrolled in the class, 8 students who had the “best” scores and 8 students who had the “worst” or “bad” scores were identified. These two groups were referred to as the “top-ranking group” and “bottom-ranking group,” respectively, and were compared. The results are shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Relationship between test scores and amount (standard deviation) of time students spent using the system
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The mean values show that the top-ranking group accessed the system more than the bottom-ranking group, spent a larger number of hours watching videos, and spent a larger number of hours using the practice problem system. Since the variances were large, it is not possible to state with certainty that the differences are statistically significant. However, the p-values in the tests for the differences of the mean values were approximately .06–.10, which indicates that the trend is significant. Although it is possible that the students who were more highly motivated or possessed stronger academic abilities used the system more frequently, the results show that there is a relationship between system usage and test scores.

Next, we investigate which types of knowledge acquisition were aided by the videos and practice problem system.

3 Relationship Between Knowledge Acquisition and System Use

3.1 Fundamental Skills and Application Skills

The Intellectual Property Management Skills Test (referred to as the Intellectual Property Test in the following) is one of the Japanese national examinations. For example, the test for level 3 is divided into the “academic subject” test and the “practical skills” test, which are both written tests. An example of a problem from the academic subject test is shown in Fig. 10.

Fig. 10.
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Example of a problem from the “academic subject” test in the level 3 Intellectual Property Test [4]

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The test consists of problems that should be answered based on actual experience with work related to intellectual property. Furthermore, the authors’ practical skills test also required students to write the reason for their answers to the problems in the practical skills test, such as the example problem shown in Fig. 11.

Fig. 11.
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Example of a problem from the “practical skills” test in the level 3 Intellectual Property Test [4]

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In this paper, we refer to knowledge that is based on the text of the law as “fundamental skills,” and the ability to solve problems such as those in the practical skills test in the Intellectual Property Test as “application skills.” Next, we investigated the relationship between test scores in the “fundamental skills” test and “application skills” test and the amount of time students spent using the system.

The correlation coefficients between the test scores earned by the students for different problem groups and the amount of time the students spent using the system is shown in Table 4. In addition, information regarding the problem groups, such as whether the problem group consisted of fundamental or application problems and the format of the problems, is shown in Table 5. Tables 4 and 5 show that the students who spent longer amounts of time watching the videos tended to have higher scores for the problems in the fundamental skills test, and the students who spent longer amounts of time using the practice problems system tended to have higher scores for the problems in the application skills test. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that the practice problem system was effective for problem groups 5 and 8, which were difficult groups (problems in which the percentage of students who answered correctly was low). This trend was observed even for problem group 3, which had the lowest percentage of students who answered correctly out of all of the problem groups in the fundamental skills test. In problem groups that consisted of a multiple-choice test, there was almost no correlation between the test scores and the amount of time that students spent watching videos or the amount of time that students spent using the practice problem system. In other words, we believe that the video watching system strengthens fundamental skills, and the practice problem system strengthens students’ abilities to apply knowledge and answer difficult questions.

Table 4. Correlation between test scores and amount of time students spent using the system
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Table 5. Problem groups for which test scores were analyzed
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3.2 Relationship Between System Features and Problem-Solving Process Model

In a previous study, the authors proposed a “problem-solving process model” [5] for intellectual property law based on the problem-solving process model for physics [6] proposed by Hirashima et al. (Table 6). In this model, the problem solving process was broken down into the following steps: (1) Reading and understanding the problem text (surface-structure generation process), (2) applying the problem text to prior knowledge (formularization process), (3) organizing knowledge necessary for solving the problem (constraint structure in the solution-derivation process), (4) assembling prior knowledge and applied knowledge (solution structure in the solution-derivation process), and (5) answering the question (goal structure in the solution-derivation process). The model uses the fact that legal texts can be written as logical expressions [7]. Referring to this problem-solving process model reveals that the surface-structure generation process and the formularization process require the acquisition of knowledge related to basic legal terms. Listening to lectures and watching videos of the lectures helps students acquire this knowledge. The solution derivation process that follows involves organizing knowledge required for solving the problem, assembling prior knowledge and applied knowledge, and answering the question. The practice problem system helps students acquire these skills.

Table 6. Problem-solving process model
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3.3 Subjective Evaluation

Students were asked to write their opinions regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the system.

Several advantages of the system identified by the students include the fact that the system gives students the freedom to watch the videos any time, the fact that the system gives students the freedom to watch the videos anywhere, and the fact that the system allows students to repeat watching the videos at their own pace, including fast-forwarding and rewinding the video (each of these advantages were identified by multiple students). In addition, the following disadvantages were identified by the students, with each of the following six disadvantages identified by one student. One student said that “the ability to watch the lectures any time made me feel less motivated during actual lectures,” which is an issue that must be investigated. In other words, there exist several students who feel that they can just watch the lectures afterwards at a leisurely pace since they are available on the system. However, if the system causes students to fail to pay attention during the lectures, this defeats the original purpose of the system. Therefore, it is necessary to think of measures for resolving this issue in the future, such as the possibility of including material that is only provided during the face-to-face lecture. Furthermore, it is also necessary to make technical improvements to the system in the future to address student complaints of problems such as slow downloads of video files and poor screen layout. Furthermore, usage of the system was not compulsory, and several students forgot about the existence of the system since the system was not promoted heavily. However, since there are no plans to make usage of the system compulsory in the future, promotion of the system will be limited to announcements during face-to-face lectures.

3.4 Discussion

The problems in the practice problem portion of the blended learning system were not reused in the final exam. Despite this, students who used the practice problem system for longer amounts of time had higher test scores in the problems in the application skills test. In other words, this implies that usage of the practice problem system may contribute to students’ abilities to generalize learning activity, which consists of the process of using and applying acquired basic knowledge, to other problems. In the introduction of this paper, we mentioned that the engineering department cannot dedicate a large amount of time solely to intellectual property education since the curriculum includes a high number of laboratory classes. However, students do not have the chance to work on a satisfactory number of practice problems within the short amount of time available for the lectures. Therefore, the lectures are useful for helping students acquire basic knowledge, and the videos are useful for verifying and reviewing this knowledge. Students should use the practice problem system to strengthen their abilities to apply this knowledge.

In addition, although this paper does not cover methods for using the video system (including which sections of the lectures are viewed the most, and ways in which students use the zoom feature) or methods for using the practice problem system (including to what extent students read the explanations), we plan to analyze these topics and add the required features in the future.

Furthermore, the subjective evaluations provided by the students revealed that although the availability of the system provides several benefits, there is also a risk that students will neglect to pay attention during the face-to-face lectures. We plan to investigate methodologies for determining how to blend the system with face-to-face lectures in the future.

4 Conclusion and Future Work

In this paper, we reported the results of using an e-learning system based on a blended learning approach developed for students enrolled in a lecture regarding intellectual property law. We compared and analyzed the usage of the system and knowledge acquisition (test scores) among the students. The results show that usage of the practice problem system was effective for improving students’ abilities to solve problems related to the application and practice of the knowledge once they have acquired knowledge in areas such as legal terms.

The authors are also developing a system intended for self-study among students who are not enrolled in face-to-face lectures [8]. We plan to study methods for combining these systems in the future.