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The purpose of this study is to examine whether the disposition to critical thinking of university students can be improved by teaching "research literacy, " a term corresponding to the basic academic skills needed for research. Nineteen junior-year students participated in a seminar on research literacy, focusing on its relations to the abilities of academic writing and data analysis. Participants were required in advance to submit assignments on applying academic writing and data analysis. Furthermore, they were measured with a critical thinking disposition scale before and after the seminar. From the results, the participants' answers on the assignments showed that about half of them did not adequately understand the essence of academic writing. Most participants created both good and bad examples of critical thinking. Furthermore, performance on the critical thinking disposition scale for participants who learned research literacy in the seminar clearly improved compared with a control group not taking the seminar. These results demonstrate that it is important not only to teach research literacy to university students around the sophomore or junior year but also to give them opportunities to think critically. This would lead to an improved disposition to critical thinking of the students.

The purpose of this study is to examine to what extent two types of evaluations are similar: course evaluations by students and that by the teacher for the same class. Seventy-nine students who took a particular class and the teacher of the class were required to evaluate each lecture throughout one semester. The results showed that there was a difference between the variances of students' evaluations and the variances of the teacher's evaluations over the semester. However, the tendencies of both evaluations were similar for many individual lectures. Furthermore, a significant correlation was found between the two types of evaluations. These findings indicate that course evaluations by the students might be generally analogous to the evaluations by the class's teacher.

The present study investigated whether expectations of reciprocity influence prosocial behaviors in a situation when there is no conflict of interests using an iterated two-person Prisoner's Dilemma. Thirty-six university students participated in the experiment. The task was to run a hamburger shop competing with the other one in an imaginative small village. The owner of the other shop was in fact the computer, which controlled the experimental sessions. Two mutually unfamiliar participants were allocated to a shop whose cost (300, 000 yen per month) was lower than that of the other (600, 000 yen per month). They were rewarded (300 yen) when their earnings exceeded the cost after several trials ("days"). There were two experimental conditions (between-subject design). In the Alternation condition, they were instructed to change their position from the owner of low cost shop to that of the other in the second session. In the Maintenance condition, they were instructed to keep their position of the owner of low cost shop during two sessions. It was shown that once they had earned enough to get the reward, the participants in the Alternation condition changed their attitude to be cooperative, while those in the Maintenance condition did not. This clearly shows that even when there is no conflict of interests, people tend to display prosocial behavior due to the expectation of reciprocity in the immediate future.

This article is the fourth report in a series of studies that investigae how to optimize information literacy education for the first year course of the Faculty of Education, Kyoto University. Fifty-eight undergraduate students participated in an introductory course in Information Science in the fiscal year 2002. They were asked to answer nearly the same questionnaire two times to assess changes in their basic knowledge of and skills in computer use, at the beginning of the course and again at the end (nine months later). We also assessed their acquired skills by using a test of practical computer skills that was administered at the end of the course. The results of these questionnaires showed a kind of "fixed point observation." The attitudes toward and knowledge of computers are not different from those of students in the precedent years. However, it is noteworthy that the number of students has been grown year by year from 2000 to 2002, who answered that they learned how to use a computer by attending the Information Science course. The results of the test of practical computer skills showed that a great discrepancy exists between students' consciousness of their skills and their measured skills. We need to minimize this discrepancy.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the disposition to critical thinking of university students can be improved by teaching "research literacy, " a term corresponding to the basic academic skills needed for research. Nineteen junior-year students participated in a seminar on research literacy, focusing on its relations to the abilities of academic writing and data analysis. Participants were required in advance to submit assignments on applying academic writing and data analysis. Furthermore, they were measured with a critical thinking disposition scale before and after the seminar. From the results, the participants' answers on the assignments showed that about half of them did not adequately understand the essence of academic writing. Most participants created both good and bad examples of critical thinking. Furthermore, performance on the critical thinking disposition scale for participants who learned research literacy in the seminar clearly improved compared with a control group not taking the seminar. These results demonstrate that it is important not only to teach research literacy to university students around the sophomore or junior year but also to give them opportunities to think critically. This would lead to an improved disposition to critical thinking of the students.

The purpose of this study is to examine to what extent two types of evaluations are similar: course evaluations by students and that by the teacher for the same class. Seventy-nine students who took a particular class and the teacher of the class were required to evaluate each lecture throughout one semester. The results showed that there was a difference between the variances of students' evaluations and the variances of the teacher's evaluations over the semester. However, the tendencies of both evaluations were similar for many individual lectures. Furthermore, a significant correlation was found between the two types of evaluations. These findings indicate that course evaluations by the students might be generally analogous to the evaluations by the class's teacher.

The present study investigated whether expectations of reciprocity influence prosocial behaviors in a situation when there is no conflict of interests using an iterated two-person Prisoner's Dilemma. Thirty-six university students participated in the experiment. The task was to run a hamburger shop competing with the other one in an imaginative small village. The owner of the other shop was in fact the computer, which controlled the experimental sessions. Two mutually unfamiliar participants were allocated to a shop whose cost (300, 000 yen per month) was lower than that of the other (600, 000 yen per month). They were rewarded (300 yen) when their earnings exceeded the cost after several trials ("days"). There were two experimental conditions (between-subject design). In the Alternation condition, they were instructed to change their position from the owner of low cost shop to that of the other in the second session. In the Maintenance condition, they were instructed to keep their position of the owner of low cost shop during two sessions. It was shown that once they had earned enough to get the reward, the participants in the Alternation condition changed their attitude to be cooperative, while those in the Maintenance condition did not. This clearly shows that even when there is no conflict of interests, people tend to display prosocial behavior due to the expectation of reciprocity in the immediate future.

This article is the fourth report in a series of studies that investigae how to optimize information literacy education for the first year course of the Faculty of Education, Kyoto University. Fifty-eight undergraduate students participated in an introductory course in Information Science in the fiscal year 2002. They were asked to answer nearly the same questionnaire two times to assess changes in their basic knowledge of and skills in computer use, at the beginning of the course and again at the end (nine months later). We also assessed their acquired skills by using a test of practical computer skills that was administered at the end of the course. The results of these questionnaires showed a kind of "fixed point observation." The attitudes toward and knowledge of computers are not different from those of students in the precedent years. However, it is noteworthy that the number of students has been grown year by year from 2000 to 2002, who answered that they learned how to use a computer by attending the Information Science course. The results of the test of practical computer skills showed that a great discrepancy exists between students' consciousness of their skills and their measured skills. We need to minimize this discrepancy.

This study aimed at investigating how to optimize information literacy education for the first year course of the Faculty of Education, Kyoto University. Sixty-four undergraduate students participated in an introductory course of Information Science in the fiscal year 2001. They were asked to answer nearly the same questionnaire two times to assess the changes in their basic knowledge and skills of computer use, namely, at the beginning of the whole course and at the end of it (nine months later). We also assessed their acquired knowledge by using a "computer literacy test" and compared it with that of graduate students of the Graduate School of Education. Though the class students had improved their basic knowledge and skills of computer use after one-year course, their average score of the computer literacy test was significantly lower than that of the graduate students at the 0.1 percent level.