Nagoya City University Faculty of Design and Architecture has created a hybrid system of face-to-face and remote classes for the first semester of the 2020 academic year, with three different teaching patterns.

In the first pattern, one class is divided into two classrooms, with a teacher giving a lecture in one of the classrooms and the lesson being streamed simultaneously via ZOOM in the other classroom through projection and loudspeaker. In the classroom without a teacher, a teaching assistant will check the communication status.

In the second pattern, half of the students in a class take a face-to-face lesson in the classroom, and the other half take a “Zoom” class at home. To ensure a fair allocation of face-to-face and Zoom lesson, we have a rotation such that students can attend lessons in the classroom every other week or at regular times.

The third pattern is a way to adjust timetables so that students do not have to travel unnecessarily between home and the classroom, and to accommodate students with inadequate networks and no computers. The pattern is to set up a communication environment in a computer room on campus where students can take classes that are being held in a different classroom through Zoom in the computer room.

In both cases, teaching assistants were indispensable, and we had to deal with several issues, such as the lack of classrooms. Also, we didn’t do a full-scale remote learning system because the curriculum of the School of Design and Architecture includes not only lectures but also practical work.

The open campus was also held online, so the students filmed a video. The exhibition of students’ works, “Taku Exhibition,” was also held online.

Two classrooms are connected via zoom to avoid crowdedness in the classroom

Video shooting for online open campus

Research that transmits information from muscle sensors to a remote classroom to make the piano play automatically