Honestly, I thought it was going to be a really hard work, but the next moment I found myself saying "Why not? I'd be delighted!" (Laughing)
So I promised myself: since I'm the one who's doing this, I should rather do it thoroughly and extensively, and achieve something as revolutionary as naming my online education style the "Kyoto Method." From then on I proposed a number of ideas that I thought might be appealing to the then President. The bottom line is, if you don't ever enjoy doing what seems challenging, it is just a burden; if you dare to enjoy yourself along the way, it won't give you much of a hassle. (Laughing)

The first attempt was the "Drug Constellation," the very first assignment from Week 1.

In my regular face-to-face classes, I ask students to illustrate their ideas in handwritten chemical structures with drawings. This is very handy as I could let the students stay away from the culture of copy-and-paste, and the speed of screening and evaluation increases on my side. I adopted the same method to my MOOC, incorporating special software into the edX site as a solution to online chemical structure drawing and freehand drawing.

For the Drug Constellation assignment, I asked students to pick one of the 100 best-selling small-molecule drugs, re-draw its chemical structure, and draw an illustration that well symbolizes the structure. It sounds tedious if you simply memorize star positions in the sky. The same task could be more engaging if you see the starts forming constellations. In the same theory, the Drug Constellation assignment transforms chemical structures into a more interesting memory game.

Exactly. I once asked the then President Matsumoto if he had any ideas about how we could make Japan's first edX course an iconic success. The President said: "Since you have a pool of 20,000-plus registered students, why don't you select a few of the top-performing ones and invite them to Kyoto?"
I replied: "That's a great idea! You must be aware though that implementing the plan will cost us some. Over to you, President!" The President did fund us for the invitation program and eventually invited all six of the top-performing students.

The students came to Kyoto for real, and attended one of my real face-to-face classes. What impressed me was that each one of them was literally an outstanding student: to be honest, I hadn't expected our online selection process would be this accurate. Later on, two of the students won the Japanese Government Scholarship, and joined my research group as graduate students.

One of the first approaches I tried was to teach in front of a real "audience" in the filming studio. (Laughing) I invited four or five international students studying at Kyoto University and filmed some clips as if I was teaching at them. Well, it didn't work out; perhaps some of my nervousness got transferred to them, so the atmosphere in the studio ended up quite tense, with the students sitting quietly with no laughter.

After this experiment, we decided it would be best to film with no audience. We finally settled in the venue I used for my regular classes, on the second floor of the iCeMS building, filmed with just the production crew present. In the end, you just have to get used to it.

At first I was bewildered by these gaps, but once I got used to them, I started to feel the benefits of delivering classes in English to a global audience, and having so many students participate.
Filming and other parts of online teaching are hard work, but I feel that it all pays off in the end.

The third change relates to the Flipped Classroom approach. If it wasn't for the MOOC, I would never have started taking this approach. The biggest change over the past four years is that I've learned how to run a Flipped Classroom.

Our reply was this: "Issues such as what the benefits are for Kyoto University are minor concerns－what we are doing here is part of a global social experiment."
Generally, technology creates disparities. The question is how to address those disparities with the power of technology. MOOCs provide an answer. "Anybody can participate in a class taught at a top-ranking university, as long as they can understand English and are connected to the internet. How could this change the world? This is a social experiment on a grand scale."

I didn't think of what would happen at that point, but if I were asked the same question again today with the benefit of four years' experience, my answer would be: "Flipped Classrooms."

Yes, they certainly are. By introducing the Flipped Classroom approach, I've been able to make my real classes here at Kyoto University more interactive. Learning has become more efficient because students can watch the lecture online at home, and concentrate on practical exercises and discussions in class.

I personally think that at Kyoto University, the Flipped Classroom approach should be followed by all courses where online lectures have already been produced and available. In fact, student survey also shows that many students are interested in taking more Flipped Classroom courses.

I found that another benefit of offering my course in English was that my real course students became more confident. At first my students were uncertain whether or not they'd be able to keep up with lectures in English, but all of them could handle it when they gave it a try.

In the student survey there were comments such as, "I realized how important English is." It seems that by actually seeing people from around the world taking the same class as them in English, students not only gained a feeling for the wider world, but realized that they needed to use English themselves, and that this was only normal.

I think a lot about that aspect myself. The students have all watched the video before class, so in a certain sense we can proceed flexibly.

Before I started using the Flipped Classroom approach, I used to just provide explanations. Flipped Classrooms have enabled me to devote time to assigned tasks and commentary.

Yes, that's part of a JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) international program.

The program is called ACBI (Asian Chemical Biology Initiative), and involves sowing the seeds of the discipline I work in, chemical biology, in emerging countries in Asia.

ACBI-Sponsored Class series is run as part of this program. These involve going out to emerging Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and providing classes. I get local students to view the MOOC in advance, then I come over and run a Flipped Classroom. The other day I did one at Fudan University in China. It was attended not only by students, but by faculty members as well.

Exactly. That's the model I want to provide. It's best if I can show them how to do it in practice and inspire them to try it out themselves, using my MOOC but running the actual classes themselves, in the local language. I hope that overseas universities follow the innovative and interactive teaching approaches that I try here at Kyoto University.

Professors at top universities really want to spend their time on research. We want to enjoy our teaching as much as possible, but don't want to devote too much effort to it. If we have such time and energy, we'd prefer to be doing more of our own research.

At the same time, as teaching is our responsibility and what should be done properly, we want to make it both enjoyable and productive. Saving enormous time on class preparation can be a major incentive.

Correct. Teaching more efficiently, offering classes globally, and being an Asian professor rather than a Japanese professor were all things that I'd thought about before the MOOC, but I didn't have any concrete ideas. It was through running the MOOC that I hit upon ideas such as Flipped Classroom and sharing of teaching resources.

In that sense, I feel rewarded for working on the MOOC as it has turned out to be a positive "killing two birds, or even three, with one stone" experience. I will continue to revise the contents of the MOOC into the future, and hope that it has an impact on many people throughout the world.