Instructors: Professor Takashi Iba, Arisa Kamata (Part-time Lecturer), Yujun Wakashin (Project Associate Professor)
How many students were in the class?
120 students
What was the class format?
Live (Zoom)
Student Feedback
"In Professor Iba's class, we had time to chat in breakout rooms with three or four people during the lecture. It was interesting because we could also talk about our daily lives."
It seems the breakout sessions were well-received. I imagine they are different from on-campus group work. Are there any points to be aware of?
In online classes, you can't have the small confirmations or share impressions with the people around you like you can in a physical classroom. So, every week during class, I incorporated several "impression chat times" (about 7 minutes each) to allow students to talk with each other about what they felt and thought about the class up to that point. At the beginning of the class, I would randomly create breakout groups and have them introduce themselves during a "self-introduction and interaction time." They would talk with the same members for that day, a measure I took to foster psychological safety. I received feedback from participating students such as, "It was great to feel a human connection even online," "I enjoyed being able to talk with students from different academic years," "It felt like we were taking the class together, which motivated me," "I looked forward to every class because there was time to talk and interact with people," "The way connections can expand precisely because it's online is very appealing, and I felt the potential of online learning," and "I was a bit down about starting university online, but this was the best class ever!"
In teaching an online class for the first time, were there any other creative measures you took? Please tell us about them.
Rather than trying to "reproduce" a class that was held in a physical classroom online, I made it a point to create and conduct the class with the intention of "reinventing" a uniquely online experience. I encouraged students to actively post what they found interesting, their impressions, thoughts, and questions in the chat, and there were indeed a significant number of posts. I called the class style a "radio show and listener mail" style, where I would feature comments from the chat, assignments, and emails as if on a radio program. In response, students commented, "It was great to feel like we were all creating the class together," "I think the chat function, in particular, shortened the distance between the students and the teacher," and "I really liked that it wasn't one-sided but interactive, with a sense that we were all creating the class together in the moment." My creative approaches to online teaching, including the ones mentioned above, and student feedback on them are summarized and uploaded here. I hope you will take a look.