Instructor: Professor Satoko Okie
How many students took the course?
Earth System: About 110 students
Social Safety Policy (Disaster Prevention): About 110 students
What was the class format?
Earth System: First half of the semester, live
Social Safety Policy (Disaster Prevention): Second half of the semester, live
*This is a 7-minute edited version of a class session (approx. 3 hours) where students created a 4.6-billion-year timeline of Earth's history. To protect privacy, the student chat, which would normally appear with names, has been edited to scroll across the center of the screen. In the actual class, the chat flows in the chat box with student names, and all participants can see and react to the messages.
Student Comments
"In Ms. Okie's Social Safety Policy class, it was great that the discussion was so lively in the Zoom chat."
"Professor Satoko Okie's spring semester courses, 'Earth System' and 'Social Safety Policy (Disaster Prevention),' actively use the chat function, enabling more lively in-class opinion exchange than in face-to-face classes."
There was feedback that the chat was very active. Did you prepare the class with that intention from the beginning?
Before the first class, I told the students in my research group to be active in the chat. Initially, I planned to have separate times for chatting and for me to speak. However, chats started pouring in while I was talking, so I switched to a style of picking them up like a radio DJ. Many students who were not in my research group also chatted a lot, and in the end, I was able to address more questions and opinions than in an on-campus, face-to-face class, and we all had a good laugh. I had a lot of fun too.
In conducting your first online classes, please tell us if there were any other creative approaches you took.
For example, in the 'Earth System' class, I divided the day's content into several parts and structured the class to repeat the following for each part.
Show a video on the class content → Explain with slides → Take questions via chat → Answer questions → Give a short quiz
Once I started teaching, the 'Take questions via chat' part became a constant, anytime activity. As a result, the chat became very lively.
Additionally, I had students do hands-on activities like creating a 4.6-billion-year timeline of Earth's history (preparing paper, glue, and pens) and conducting experiments in front of the screen, to ensure they weren't just passively listening. It was like trying things I do in face-to-face classes online, and it worked without any problems.