Varied Voices  0:09  
Hello and welcome to OEG Voices... OEG Voices... OEG Voices... OEG Voices

the new podcast bringing to you the voices and ideas of

open educators from around the world. OEG Voices is produced by Open Education Global, a member based nonprofit organization supporting the development and use of open education globally.

Learn more about us at oe global dot org.

There's much to take in at a global level.

And we hope to bring you closer to how open education is

working by hearing the stories of practitioners holding their own voices. Each episode introduces you to a global open educator and we invite you to later engage in conversation with them in our OEG Connect community.

Alan Levine  0:55  
I'm your host today. Alan Levine from OE Global and I'm joined today by my colleague Paul Stacey. Hey, Paul. It's great to be here together. So who has joined us? 

Paul Stacey  1:05  
Hi, Alan, it's good to be here too. Nice to be doing this with you. We have this great guest today I'm really excited about. So our guest is Katsu Shigeta, who's an associate professor at the Information Technology Center of Hokkaido University in Japan. He's the Associate Director of the Center for Open Education there. And the President of the Japan Open Courseware Consortium. His specialty is in education technology, and he does research related to the development of online learning and distance education, especially around the use of open education, resources and MOOCs. And I'm really delighted to also say that he's a highly respected member and insightful member of our Open Educatiol Global board of directors. And as you know, Alan, he's part of the planning committee for Open Education Global's upcoming conference. And I'll say one last thing. A proud father of a baby boy born in December last year. Welcome. Welcome, Katsu.

Katsu Shigeta  2:05  
Thank you for a great introduction. Hi, everyone. My name is Katsu Shigeta and I'm Associate Professor at Hokkaido University. Hokkaido University is one of the biggest public universities in the north side of Japan. We have over 2000 faculty and over 20,000 students. Yeah, it's big. My second position in my university is Associate Director of the Center for Open Education. This university, it is quite unique because it is only such organization housed in a university in Japan. So we promote OER usage and development. And we usually created over 500 or yes of OER and this is very important. Because we aim to promote the introduction of online learning, utilizing OER as learning materials in Japan, compared to the US and Canada, we do not have problems of textbook costs. So we aren't just supplementing materials, we are trying to find a way to utilize oer for the end to improve student outcomes. So, in my opinion, this is a little bit different approach compared to US and Canada. What do you think about all?

Paul Stacey  3:35  
 Yeah, that's a really interesting observation katsu, and it's not surprising to me, I guess I'd say immediately because it's become apparent, the more I work on Open Education globally, that the reasons for doing Open Education differ around the world. And so it's not surprising that that say, affordability and cost savings are not necessarily the drivers in Japan. Um, I'd be curious to hear what the drivers  are and how even interest in open education got started. Who introduced you to open education? Okay.

Katsu Shigeta  4:12  
I like this  story. It was 2000... yeah, it was 2008. When I met OER education for the first time, I had a le  cture in Tokyo by an evangelist of open education. His name is Toru Iiyoshi. He's a co-editor of "Open Up Education". At that time, he was at MIT, and he came to Japan and had a lecture. So I was so stimulated by his talk, and after his talk, I asked him, I want to go to the US and want to learn about open education. In the next year, fortunately, I got the funding for a Fulbright scholarship, and I went to UC Berkeley to lea rn about use of open educational resources. So this is a story that I began to teach with OERs.

Paul Stacey  5:08  
Alright, great. It was and how long were you there?

Katsu Shigeta  5:11  
About half a year, it was quite a short time. But I traveled around the US and visited some conferences that made it possible to be connected in open education. So it was very good experience to create some kind of network for sure.

Paul Stacey  5:32  
And now 12 years later Katsu and it's 2020. And you've had quite a few years now of actually working on open education in Japan. Maybe it would be interesting for us to hear something about what you're working on now that you're really excited about.

Katsu Shigeta  5:52  
C urrently, we have a similar project in my university to be excited, but especially I have two project to be excited, more. On the first one, it's a development of OER with Adobe. It is to learn about digital literacy. And it is our first attempt to a corporate research with the enterprise to develop OER for our own needs. And this is OER  for obtaining digital literacy. And it is based on the UNESCO digital literacy framework. And we already developed some of the materials and are using this for my class. So, and Adobe... they hope to use these materials to disseminate their idea and their product too. So this kind of combination is quite important and interesting for us. And the second one is dissemination of open content for student suffering under COVID-19. Currently we have discussion about, especially for the  freshman student,  because they are obliged to study at home. And they focus on the lecture and assignments for the last two months. And for this reason, some students face difficulties both in physical and mental health. So our idea is learning by Open Education will broaden their view and let them have a new course of campus life. So we are planning to cooperate with i nstitutions in open education Japan, to aggregate existing materials, which fit university students. It is very exciting and it is so sorely needed.

Paul Stacey  5:52  
 Now the work with Adobe is really interesting, Katsu. Maybe I'll just ask a couple of questions about that. It seems to me that a partnership like that will benefit both parties and I am Imagine that Adobe's also interested in the relationship of OER related to these competencies for digital literacy being useful in the workplace as well.

Katsu Shigeta  8:12  
Yes, they have interest  in that. And the intention of Adobe that they want to find a way how to use the application in the general education at universities, because they already integrate their software for  some colleges or some special courses, but they are trying to find a way, how to   utilize their products to grow students' competencies. So I think that sort of digital iteracy is one of those skills for them.

Paul Stacey  8:47  
And the use of open education in addressing issues around education during the pandemic. I'm curious whether the the efforts that you're putting into that, are likely to persist even once the pandemic is over. Are things going to,  you know, everyone talks about going back to "normal", whatever that is. But  in some ways it feels like the things that we're doing now to address the pandemic challenges are potentially useful and might continue after the pandemic. Is that your hope as well?

Katsu Shigeta  9:26  
Yeah, this is what we are talking about now. So, for example, in education itself, how to teach online in the whole secondary education is changing dramatically. In my opinion, after the pandemic passes, our notion and our way of thinking for the educational methodology may change, because we may find the possibilities of online learning and online materials. So after that, we may not be back to the "Before" we may create a kind of "new normal", so we try to find a way now how to utilize our existing materials and the existing experience for the future.   So I don't know the result. And I don't know the final design, but we should find that way.

Paul Stacey  10:18  
And when when you work on these projects, Katsu, are you finding lots of interest from your colleagues? Do you have a lot of support? Are people keen about Open Education? Or is there resistance to it? What's the... what's the, I guess, level of interest in exploring Open Education as a useful tool to address some of these urgent needs, but also as a kind of new form of education?

Katsu Shigeta  10:51  
Hmm, this is a good question. What I'm doing in my university as the Associate Director at the Center for Open Education is asked the faculty to find the value of Open Education in the campus education. So it's that easy success, but we are finding the scope, how does someone succeed? For example, we are choosing ...some fear to use that.  For example we are one of the fears we are focusing on is nuclear education. Because after that big earthquake in Japan 10 years before we are facing how to deal with nuclear energy for our lives . So, in this field, the faculty in education program, are struggling to find  students to learn in this field. So they are trying collaborate among the institutions and create OERs to grow a new generation to support in  their field. We can find some fields that the faculty and programs should work together. This is a good point to create OER because OERs are licensed so they create OER each other and make it updated to collborate. In Japan, faculty don't have a culture to share resources with each other. So it is a problem because when we create OER in our campus, the faculty only use this what is theirs. It's not good considering the  potential of OERs. So this is our current situation. 

Paul Stacey  12:38  
And you've  had some history with the Japan Open Courseware Initiative and JMOOCs and and I know there's also the the Asuka Academy. P erhaps you could share with us now a little bit about how all of these different efforts around open education in Japan are kind of coming together or working together or generating interest. 

Katsu Shigeta  13:11  
This is a good question, too. Actually, I'm a board member of JMOOC and Asuka Academy. So I, I'm a person of Open Education. I'm only one person to have bridges with all three organizations. And, yes, this is a big question how we put our power together to make open education visible in Japan. Basically, JMOOC focuses on MOOC  development and dissemination and Asuka Academy focuses on the translation of existing OER materials.  And Open Education Japan is formerly open courseware, Japan. So we just focus on creating our own OpenCourseWare  for each  institution. So the characteristics of organizations are quite different. So we should find a way how to put our effort together. But that the current exchange on COVID-19 changes the situation because we are facing the issue how to deal with this issue and how to utilize our existing efforts and experience for that. So currently, we are having a web-based seminar with each other periodically. So this kind of activity may put our effort together in the future.

Paul Stacey  14:40  
And it's clear with your particular role on all these boards that you're gonna play a significant function there. I wonder as you you're on our board as well for Open Education Global's board and and i wonder, Katsu, what you think open educators can do better as a global community. You've talked about what it's like in Japan. I wonder what your thoughts are about open education globally and what we might do better.

Katsu Shigeta  15:13  
So in my opinion, Open Education is both global trend and local activity. So basically sharing resources and experience is crucial and very important. And at the same time, we should recognize a global trend and local needs too. If we don't divide them those two, it may have risks. Driving local activities too much by global trends may decrease the value in our regional community or local community. And at the same time, if we focus on local needs too much, it may narrow the scope of the project because we don't know a global trend. So a kind of balancing act is important to make innovation happen. So how to make a combination of ideas. So we should know what's happening in the global scale. And what we should do in the local scale is of importance. So try to find a combination is very difficult.

Paul Stacey  16:23  
I know you have a young boy now,  Katsu and I don't know about you, but I often think about the future for our children. And   I wonder how you see Open Education playing a role or a potential role for the future of open education and maybe what your hopes are for the function and role of open education for the future.

Katsu Shigeta  16:51  
That's a good question. And I like this question. So yes, and the for the next generation I want to let them know the potential to share knowledge by themselves by teaching and learning by themselves, you know, the teaching is the best way to learn. And you may know the potential of learning by teaching. So, if we learn by OER only, it's not good. We can create OER by themselves and share our knowledge and experiences with each other. Like for example, I'm doing a class in my university, it is for freshman, this course aims to create OER by students to learn about digitalsociety. So and the interesting point on this class is that created OER is used by the next generation. As you may know, so if we have next year student and they learn by the OER greeted by the previous generation. So this kind of combination to use, make some kind of cycle is nice thing.

Paul Stacey  18:11  
I agree. I think I always think of this Katsu is we're all learners, and we're all teachers. And and that kind of attitude of both having a teaching and a learning role for everybody, instead of the traditional sort of, this is a teacher and this is a student kind of separation, I think is a wonderful, new approach that is a part of open education and I too find that very exciting. I think that's a great mindset for education going forward and I think will really help help students. Alan I've been doing all the questions, what if you do have some questions or remarks that you'd like to make with Katsu?

Alan Levine  18:55  
It's really great to see and hear everything that Katsu has been doing And, and get a sense, I guess, you know, I would like what's like the first thing you want to do when you sort of get back to it there's a quote, normal routine, you know, when, you know you walk into the office and you know, what's it gonna feel like? And also it might be, I don't know if you can generalize, just like you know every place is different and how they're reacting to this. I mean what's what's like the mood in their community  and with the people around you with with looking to what the next few months will unfold?

Katsu Shigeta  19:35  
Yeah, curremtly Japan is facing a difficult situation because the number of patients are increasing increasing rapidly. And we should find a way how to deal with this issue because and we should maintain our economics too. So it's quite a difficult thing and especially in the university, faculty are facing difficulties too, because they should teach online. So  most of them do not have experience in that. So we and our organization, our Center for Education is doing information dissemination for them how to do this online learning, how to care the students for that. And this kind of information may have a big impact for the campus. And actually, our way of working may change because, currently, I'm basically working at home. And  one of the reasons is I have a little child, but  in the near future, or while we are working or where we are, where we work may change. This is a big challenge for the university life too.

Alan Levine  20:58  
Absolutely. Well, I hope though that all the trees will bloom beautifully again. Hopefully we can count on that. This has been great. So I really appreciate you joining us for this. we're still like getting some of the kinks out of our system here.

Katsu Shigeta  21:16  
I just wonder if, some of the phrases I spoke me be ambiguous because my potential of English so if you need I rephrase my talk again, if you need it, please let me know later.

Alan Levine  21:29  
Actually, we prefer that, you know, you speak as naturally and this is your voice and it's perfectly understandable. And also just want to say like, we're really looking forward to seeing you and your role in the Global Conference coming up in November. It will be kind of a new experience for all of us. But we will be in that same place together and we really appreciate everything that you've been contributing to that process.

Katsu Shigeta  21:53  
Yeah, so I'm very excited to have OEG Connect for this, it is a very important platform. To continue the collaboration on a global scale in this situation, so thank you. 

Alan Levine  22:07  
Thank you everyone for listening to this episode of voices from OE Global. Our featured open music license today is a title called "Sunset Park Two" by a group, I don't know who they are, but their name is "Poddington Bear" and shared under Creative Commons license from the collection at the Free Music Archive, which is a fantastic resource of open licensed music. So you can find this episode at our site voices dot OE global dot org and engage in follow up conversations at OEG Connect, which is Connect dot OE Global dot org. If you'd like to share your open education work or suggest future guests, please let us know. So the more voices the better, right.

Paul Stacey  22:52  
Absolutely. Thanks so much, Alan. Thanks, Katsu. 

Katsu Shigeta  22:54  
So thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai