The Potential of Sharing the Same Space and Time, Neither On-Campus nor Online | Shohei Matsukawa, Assistant to the Dean / Associate Professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies
2020.07.14
Faculty and students cook dinner together, eat at the same table, hold workshops, have a blast talking nonsense late into the night, and drift off to sleep while discussing their dreams. At SFC, there is a unique class like this. This is not a research seminar retreat held during summer break, but a legitimate class held during the semester at the residential building of the Miraisozojuku (Institute for Designing the Future) , which is adjacent to SFC. This class, called "Introduction to Student Built Campus (SBC)," is taught by five faculty members: Hiroto Kobayashi, Hajime Ishikawa, Fumitoshi Kato, Yoko Hasebe, and myself. It is offered for a total of seven sessions in the first half of the spring semester, with students staying overnight in the residential building for all seven sessions. The first session is an orientation, the last is a final review for all participants, and the five sessions in between are workshops, each coordinated by one of the five faculty members. The underlying theme for all sessions is to think about residential-style research and education that shares the same space and time. It is a very challenging class where faculty and students experience this firsthand, learning through trial and error.
However, we are now in a situation where we must avoid sharing the same space and time in the physical environment as much as possible. "Introduction to SBC" was also moved completely online this semester. For "Introduction to SBC," a class designed to contemplate residential-style research and education through firsthand experience, being unable to share the same physical space and time is like being a bird with clipped wings. No matter how long we connect on Zoom in real time, it can never match the richness of staying overnight in the residential building. Therefore, for the session I was in charge of, I decided against holding a real-time online class. That is not to say I simply prepared on-demand video content for the students to learn from. Instead, I decided to give an assignment that would make them think about the possibilities of sharing the same space and time in ways that are neither on-campus, online, nor on-demand. I will introduce the content and results of that assignment at another time, but what I want to share today is the table below, which I used to explain this assignment to the students.
If we assign a "1" when space and time are synchronous and a "0" when they are asynchronous in both the physical and information environments, all possibilities from "0000" to "1111" can be represented by 4 bits, meaning 2 to the power of 4, for a total of 16 patterns. Let's tentatively call these 16 possible patterns the "framework for class formats." For example, when people arrange to meet in the physical environment, they will not meet if either the space or time is out of sync (though this may not be intuitive for the smartphone generation). Therefore, on-campus classes, which are now prohibited in principle, correspond to Nos. 4, 8, 12, and 16, where both time and space in the physical environment are synchronous. Online classes, which synchronize in a specific space within the information environment at a specific time, correspond to Nos. 7, 8, 15, and 16. On-demand classes, where students watch recorded video content at a synchronized class site URL in the information environment while their space and time in the physical environment are asynchronous, correspond to Nos. 5 and 6.
In my session for "Introduction to SBC," I wanted to explore the possibilities of the other numbers. By positing this "framework for class formats" and enumerating all possibilities, we can avoid falling into a binary opposition of whether online or on-campus is better, and instead think from a meta-level that sublates both. Through this, I thought we could select from a gradation of options and apply them appropriately even after the COVID-19 pandemic. Having only one option is risky, but on the other hand, having no structure and saying "anything goes" leaves you with nothing to hold on to. I believe that having several options within a certain framework is what nurtures the potential for rich research and education. That said, the "framework for class formats" mentioned above is just a draft, and I myself do not yet fully understand it. I would like to think about it together while receiving feedback from all of you.