In April 2016, a certain lecture course at Kyoto University became a hot topic on Twitter. What has caught people's interest in these liberal arts and sciences lectures is that during classes students can post comments that then appear on the slides displayed on the lecture hall screen, in a similar style to that of the Japanese video-sharing website Niconico Douga, where users' comments are overlaid onto videos in real time.
We spoke to Dr. Hiroaki Mizuhara, the faculty member who proposed this teaching style, to find out what a "Niconico Douga-style lecture" contains, and the thinking behind the decision to adopt such a format. Our chat with Dr. Mizuhara revealed a faculty member who is drawing on the results of his specialist research to devise improvements in teaching methods.

The photos above show a Niconico Douga-style lecture. Comments from students appear on the lecture slides, in the style of the video-sharing website Niconico Douga. The lecturer sees the screen and responds to questions that students post as comments. (Photos taken on July 21, 2016.)
*As Dr. Mizuhara's lectures had already finished when we conducted this interview, here we used photographs of a lecture by Associate Professor Satoshi Tsujimoto (Graduate School of Informatics), who teaches the course with Dr. Mizuhara. The classes are described as "relay lectures," as the lecturers take it in turns to teach classes based on their expertise.)

Yes, although technically we use a publicly-available tool called Papapa Comment, it is something different to the pioneer of the format, Niconico Douga. Papapa Comment is a beta-version tool that was made available by Recruit Holdings, Co., Ltd. ("Recruit") around seven to eight years ago. It can be used by simply installing it on the lecturer's computer.
Students don't need to install anything. By accessing the Papapa Comment website and typing in the relevant "room name" set in advance by the lecturer, students can send comments which are then overlaid on the slides displayed in the lecture, via the lecturer's computer. All the students need to do is be online.

Yes, but that wasn't last year. The lecture format didn't attract special interest online until this year. Apparently, some people outside the university－particularly people in the field of psychology－have picked up on the excitement surrounding it online and started using the same tool.

As you might guess, I think a significant benefit is the fact that students show interest in the class and the slides. Especially when it's a large lecture with as many as several hundred students, if you don't make efforts to keep students focused, they will quickly get bored and doze off or not look to the front. So, my first aim was to ensure that students look to the front, and keep looking to the front. With this tool, when a stream of comments starts filling the screen, it might include an interesting comment or two, so students look to the front to avoid missing something interesting. That was the first obvious benefit.
In the process of trying out the format, I realized that it also helps me to see what areas students don't understand, and what kinds of things are difficult for them to understand. I made sure to go through such areas again, and it seems that this has helped to develop students' understanding.

Well, yes, it's incredibly difficult for students to do that.

Yes. When a student who already has some knowledge of the field asks a question that delves a bit deeper, or a student has a good question, regardless of their prior knowledge of the topic, I add in explanations on topics I hadn't originally planned to talk about. I think that such opportunities to expand the topic are also considerably beneficial.

That certainly happens! Particularly, at the start, because students try to have fun with it.
But in the first lecture of the course, I make sure to tell students that I will stop using the system if the comments get too bad. I explain that that won't be in anyone's benefit, so they should try to exercise moderation. If I do that, the comments don't get too out of hand.
At the same time, you probably won't be surprised to hear that we still get some comments that are honestly quite trivial. I make a point of not responding to those ones, and eventually the students who write them give up. When they're ignored, they realize that there's no point in making such comments, so instead they start to try their best to think of comments that will prompt a response.

Yes, sometimes they even go for topics that don't have anything to do with the lecture. When something like that happens－such as a student going for a silly topic－sometimes I'll make a good comeback or turn it into an opportunity to link it to some area of neuroscience. While they might have started with a silly question, such chances to take the lecture in a different direction are actually quite interesting.

I just recently had the opportunity to write a column on that topic for a newspaper published by university students (Kyoto Daigaku Shimbun).
My specialist field is related to communication, and in recent years I have been focusing my research on synchronization.

This prompted me to investigate whether the same can be said of communication between humans. To do this, I have recently been investigating oral communication. It is a known fact that speech itself has a rhythm. On this basis, I am starting new research to explore whether such rhythm prompts synchronization between one person's brain and another when they are speaking to each other, and whether synchronization between one person's brain and another causes two sets of knowledge to fuse and generate new knowledge.
In that sense, in lectures it is also the case that if information is only flowing one way, it is difficult for synchronization to occur, but if power is transmitted in both directions, this facilitates synchronization and allows for the communication of information. However, in a typical lecture, where one side is the lecturer and the other side is the students, the information from the students doesn't really reach the lecturer. And even if there's just information from the lecturer, in terms of the physical principles, synchronization may at least be possible, but it will be highly inefficient. If the lecturer's metronome is influenced by the oscillation of the students', this eases synchronization, and as they adopt the same timing, it becomes easier for them to communicate with each other. This is the kind of concept behind the lecture format I am currently pursuing.

Yes, exactly. The point is that Papapa Comment serves as the tool to prompt synchronization. Such phenomena have also been clarified in theoretical terms. Professor Yoshiki Kuramoto, professor emeritus of the Kyoto University Faculty of Science, has been researching this area for many years, and some researchers are currently pursuing similar research on the brain to investigate whether the same thing can be said of what occurs within the brain.

Dr. Mizuhara holding the textbook used in the lectures. He selects the materials for the course from this textbook and makes them into slides. He also explained that he is always careful when selecting the content, because the students taking the course are from a variety of faculties.

As far as I can tell from the feedback we received from students in last year's lecture evaluation questionnaires, I think that it has had an effect. It seems that a fair number of students have sensed that we are putting effort into devising the formats for lectures. For instance, although it is quite normal for the number of attendees to decrease toward the end of a course, in this lecture (editor's note: Associate Professor Tsujimoto's last lecture of the first semester－the lecture covered for this article), of the over 400 students registered to take the course, over 300 attended. I think that's a relatively large percentage for a liberal arts and sciences course at this point in the academic year.
At the same time, naturally, not all of the feedback is positive. Some students comment that they don't like the format. We've received feedback saying that the text coming up on the screen is distracting and makes it hard to concentrate. In fact, apparently some chose not to take the course because they preferred to avoid such a format.

But I have also taken this in mind as far as possible. My approach is to write up explanations on the board, and I largely use the blackboard and only put up certain diagrams on the screen where necessary. I also upload those slides to KULASIS (editor's note: Kyoto University's Liberal Arts Syllabus Information System [KULASIS] is an online system compiling university-wide academic affairs and information) a week before the lecture, I tell the students to download the slides from there and look through them before class. I include comments on the diagrams on the slides so that students can prepare for the lecture.
I make such adjustments to ensure that as many students as possible are able to take the course. But, of course, depending on the student, those efforts may simply be counterproductive.

I always give students the time to take photos of what has been written on the board with their phones. This is because I want them to be focused on listening, rather than taking notes, during the lecture.
I tell the students that when they start their careers, it will be more important to know and understand things, as opposed to just memorizing them. With that in mind, I also allow them to bring whatever materials they need to exams－that is, apart from phones or other such communication devices.

Well, I have continued to write out explanations on the board because for some students there are things that are very difficult to understand unless they are written out in an analog－that is, non-digital－format. I don't think it's the case that everything needs to be digital.

On a related note, I also emphasize the fact that a lecture is a "one-time-only chance." Students can only hear a class in real time once. This is the key point about lectures－a certain lecture can only be heard at one certain timing. With that in mind, when questions come up in class－as long as they are serious ones－I try my best to actively pick up on them, and probe the issues raised as far as I can.

There are two main things. Firstly, there is my wish for students to see the fun in neuroscience. To help them to do that, I'm also keen to ensure that they develop "positive associations," or in other words, positive feelings, that they connect with the discipline. If they link it with negative feelings, the very field of neuroscience will no longer be interesting for them.

Dr. Mizuhara describes himself as a lecturer who "may not be burning with a passion for teaching." When we fish for more, asking if it isn't a tough job all the same, he cheerfully replies: "Yes, I am always trying my very best to address students' needs and interests sincerely. If I'm honest, it's hard going."

The graduate school I belong to, the Graduate School of Informatics, doesn't have a faculty, so all students join us from graduate level. We are happy to see more and more students joining the field after hearing about it in lectures and developing an interest in the graduate school because it covers neuroscience. Such benefits are the first kind of thing that boosts our motivation.
The other is related to the fact that－like a number of people who teach at university－I may not be burning with a passion for teaching, but I think that if I'm going to do it, I should make sure I enjoy it. If the lecturer isn't enjoying the class, it will simply be wasted time for both sides, so I think it's important to do things that I find fun and interesting. When I communicate with the students and get them laughing because of a joke I have made, it's fun for me too. And vice versa, there are also times when a student's comment makes me laugh as well. I want to ensure the lectures include some fun elements.

Not really. We draw up the classes by choosing a textbook that will act as a basis. We aim to complete a textbook each half-year, by covering a chapter each class. Associate Professor Tsujimoto and I simply choose which chapters we are each going to cover.
It was this year that Mr. Tsujimoto started using Papapa Comment. And initially I just started using it, without mentioning it to him. When there was positive feedback from students about Papapa Comment in last year's lecture evaluation questionnaires, and it received a lot of attention online this year, it was a natural development for him to start using the same approach.

That's right－Papapa Comment certainly wasn't the basis for everything. I just started using it for fun. And it's not like I actively introduced it to Mr. Tsujimoto.

Now you mention it, there has been absolutely no response from within the university! On the other hand, as I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, I've heard it was being adopted by lecturers outside the university. I've asked how it is going, and apparently, they have also received positive feedback.

Yes, I'm also hoping that the university's central administration will help with that.
As I partially explained at the start of the interview, the tool we use, Papapa Comment, is a beta version－it's been test run as a beta version for about seven to eight years now, so Recruit could easily stop operating it at any time. That is also clearly specified in the terms of use. I think that it would be a real shame, and a real problem, if it stops being available.
So, I think it would be great if the university could develop such a tool. If the system was managed using student ID numbers, that would probably put a stop to inappropriate comments. While I'm not sure if that's the best idea, I think it would allow more lecturers to feel comfortable about using it. And, after all, we can't expect Recruit's Papapa Comment system to provide such an identification function for us.
Although, the reason why I just said I'm not sure if it is the best idea is because it could make students feel hesitant to use the tool, which would do away with all the interesting comments. If students can't enjoy the lectures in an environment open to laughter, they won't develop those "positive associations"－that is, they won't connect the memories of what they have learned with positive feelings. That would make the approach quite meaningless in terms of what I originally sought to achieve with it. So, I think that we would need to try it out before we can say that controlling the system to that extent would be an effective step.

In technical terms, I've heard that the system uses Adobe AIR, but while I'm a member of the Graduate School of Informatics, my specialization is neuroscience, so unfortunately, I can't develop it myself. But for someone who knows how to do it, it's probably not that difficult.

Yes, that's right.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Questions asked by Motoko Okumoto and Takeo Suzuki
Article composition: Takeo Suzuki
Interview date: July 22, 2016

Published online: May 15, 2017 (Original article)
May 7, 2018 (English article)