December 24, 2021
A work by Wataru Ishihara, a second-year student in the Doctoral Programs at the Graduate School of Media and Governance and a member of Professor Akira Wakita's lab at the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, won the Runner-up Prize at the CREATIVE HACK AWARD 2021. The "CREATIVE HACK AWARD," hosted by the Japanese edition of the global innovation media "WIRED," has been held since 2013 as an award that recognizes creative minds that do not fit into existing genres and aims to connect them with actual business opportunities.
[Award-Winning Work]
Class Jack—An outrageous interface that allows students to tamper with the teacher's slides
Award Acceptance Comments from Wataru Ishihara (Second-Year Doctoral Student, Graduate School of Media and Governance)
Many university online classes have devolved into somber affairs where students stare at slides for 90 minutes with the teacher's voice as a secondary audio track. If a class is one-way, there's no need for it to be live. Furthermore, there are wonderful lectures archived around the world, and it seems far more meaningful to watch those instead.
There is little advantage that a one-way live online class, for which students pay high tuition, has over a world-class archived lecture that can be viewed for free. Aren't classes, as they move online, also becoming obsolete? I implemented this system out of such concerns and criticism.
Class Jack is a system that allows everyone to doodle on slides, but doodling in a textbook is also a reaction of rebellion against the class. This is an attempt to creatively embrace such reactions, create new interactions, and explore the significance of being live.
I was able to observe various phenomena while conducting an introductory experiment in the SFC lecture "Art and Science." I feel that I have seen a glimmer of hope for the significance of being live. This is all thanks to everyone's cooperation in the experiment.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Wakita, who adopted this experimental system in his class despite the risks, and to all of "you guys" who helped create the class together while utilizing this work.
(P.S. Class Jack is available in a beta version. If you have an opportunity where you think you could use it, please contact me through Wataru Ishihara's homepage!)
From: General Affairs Section, Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) Office