Cybozu Live Case Study: Kazuhiro Shiozawa, Seikei University, Faculty of Law

2012/04/09

Seikei University Faculty of Law [Kazuhiro Shiozawa

Professor Kazuhiro Shiozawa of the Seikei University Faculty of Law has been searching for an efficient way to share information in seminars by making full use of Internet services such as Facebook, Evernote, and Dropbox. In 2012, he will introduce the free collaboration tool "Cybozu Live" to his seminar activities. We interviewed the professor to find out why he chose Cybozu Live, as well as how information sharing should be done in educational institutions.

He has contributed to numerous media, including a series of articles in "Mac People" magazine. His photography skills, honed since his student days, are solid, and his photographs of Steve Jobs taken in Cambodia have been featured on the cover of many magazines. As part of his life's work, he has been involved in NGO activities for more than 10 years and travels to Cambodia once a year to teach at a local university.

The man with a diverse face is Professor Kazuhiro Shiozawa of Seikei University's Faculty of Law. He is a legal scholar and university faculty member with the motto, "The role of a scholar is to make difficult things easy, and the role of a teacher is to make them interesting.

Dr. Shiozawa has been exploring ways to share information in seminars by making full use of Internet services such as Facebook, Evernote, and Dropbox. He decided to introduce the free collaboration tool "Cybozu Live" to his seminar activities in the 2012 academic year. We interviewed him about how information should be shared at the university.

"If you don't express yourself, it's as if you're not there."

What is Dr. Shiozawa's approach to education?

My specialty is jurisprudence, and I conduct lectures and seminars on civil law and copyright law. Jurisprudence is the study of considering facts in light of the law and finding appropriate solutions, so it is necessary to think for oneself.

There are 100 different conclusions that can be drawn based on the law for every 100 people, so no matter how much you learn about the law, simply acquiring knowledge is meaningless. It is only meaningful if you can use it to think for yourself and come up with your own answers. In order to come up with a solution, you need to think for yourself, and at the same time, you need to sharpen your thinking through discussions with people who have different ways of thinking from you.

I believe that "education is not teaching," so in my seminars I only give hints and do not give answers. There is no one-size-fits-all answer, and the answer lies within the students themselves, so I ask them to think about it thoroughly.

People forget what they have been taught quickly, but it is difficult to forget the answers they have thought up on their own, and even if they do forget, they can reach the solution again on their own. We want students to cultivate the ability to think.

Dr. Shiozawa

Dr. Shiozawa talks seriously with a student who visited during the interview.

A corner of the bookshelf in the back is crammed with special cameras.

So "education without teaching" is education for "thinking and coming up with answers on one's own.

That's right. I always tell my students, "If you don't express yourself, you are not there. In my classes, I evaluate and give points to students who participate, speak up, and make contributions to the people present. Simply "attending" class does not count. Life is not interesting if you rely on others' comments without thinking for yourself, isn't it?

The essence of human nature is to think and take new actions. In our lectures, we keep asking students one question after another and ask them to think and express themselves. When they go out into the world, it is essential for them to think and produce output on their own. In order to lay the groundwork for this, it is important to nurture each student's ability to express themselves spontaneously through the university setting.

You continue to educate students to reach their potential without being limited by the academic field of law.

Yes, it is. In this sense, the law is material for thinking. Laws contain a variety of rules. People tend to think of rules as "something that constrains them" and restrict their behavior. However, rules are not intended to restrict people, but to maintain order in which people can live freely.

We want students of jurisprudence to grasp the ideas behind the articles of laws such as the Civil Code and the Copyright Act, and then repeatedly practice how to apply the articles to the facts to derive a solution, and master the ideas and methods.

The photographs are the life's work of Dr. Shiozawa.

In addition to his serialization in magazines, he also conducts his own photography classes.

Therefore, even in large classroom lectures, we all read the articles together aloud many times, examine the significance of the detailed wording of the articles, and grasp the significance of the existence of individual articles from the overall system of the law. Through the material of jurisprudence, I hope that students will refine their own values, develop their own views based on them, and cultivate the ability to express them, as well as develop a firm confidence to lead their own lives. Recently, a friend of mine who is an elementary school teacher came up with the word "Yutaka" (meaning "abundant" in Japanese), and I felt a great deal of empathy for it. It is an acronym for "slowly," "enjoy," and "think," and it teaches elementary school students the importance of "thinking." It is a wonderful education.

Mac People

Dr. Shiozawa's photographs have graced the cover of Mac People many times.

Photo by Kaz Shiozawa, credit goes to Dr. Shiozawa.

To nurture human resources who can think and come up with answers on their own. I thought that is the philosophy of Mr. Shiozawa. To this end, I hear that you are making various efforts to share information with students.

In class, I emphasize the importance of "interactivity," in which students and I engage in dialogue, and I also encourage students to share their opinions with each other. The number of times students speak up in class is recorded by the teaching assistants (TAs), and all of them are scored in the grading process. In addition, we ask students to submit an "Opinion Paper" each time, in which they write answers to the questions we give at the end of the lecture and their opinions about the lecture, and we return the paper with our comments every week.

I have been teaching at the university for 14 years and have continued to do so without fail in all my classes. In 2011, I used a Facebook group for discussions in my lectures and seminars. the reason I used Facebook was because I wanted to create a "place for students to think and discuss" outside of face-to-face settings such as classes and seminars.

Classes and seminars are held once a week, but we needed a place where students could think and give output to each other during the week before the next meeting. The Web is ideal as an environment where students can think whenever they want and express their opinions at any time. In the Facebook group, students post their views on the "questions" posed during the lectures and their answers to the "subjects" I give at the end of the class, and students comment on them to each other. Active exchanges of ideas took place among seminar students and law school graduate students. The Facebook group served as an infrastructure for students to clarify and deepen the quality of their own thinking. At the same time, Dropbox and Evernote were used to share reporting materials.

We have heard that Dr. Shiozawa will introduce Cybozu Live for student information sharing starting with the 2012 seminar. While you had achieved results by using multiple services together, is there a reason why you decided to use Cybozu Live?

This is because Cybozu Live allows you to gather all information related to lectures and seminars in one place. By creating "groups" for each purpose and inviting the necessary members, you can centrally handle information such as discussions and shared files according to group activities.

In addition to my class and seminar groups, I use Cybozu Live groups for each community, including my serialization in the magazine Mac People, faculty members in my department and faculty, and a non-profit organization that does volunteer work in Cambodia.

Then, information that used to be communicated by e-mail separately will be consolidated into groups, and information from all the groups will be integrated into Cybozu Live. We found this very convenient.

How did you come to use Cybozu Live and what is your current application?

We were looking for a better system while promoting information sharing using a combination of mailing lists, Facebook, Dropbox, and Evernote. That's when I remembered that I had registered with Cybozu Live. I think the first time I learned about Cybozu Live was when Masaki Ishitani introduced it to me in the past.

We actually started using the system in 2012. The official use of the system in seminars started in April, and we are already operating 13 groups. Specifically, we have created groups such as "undergraduate seminar," "seminar alumni executive committee," "for faculty members of the department," "Mac People," and "NGO activities in Cambodia," and we mainly use the "bulletin board.

For example, the group for Mac People includes the deputy editor, the editor-in-chief, and myself. We have separate forums for online discussions on topics such as manuscripts for serials, proofreading, and themes for upcoming serials. Most of the posts are made by the editor and myself, but since the deputy editor participates in the group, the deputy editor can easily track the content and progress of the editorial work. This is superior to e-mail.

Dr. Shiozawa's home screen

Dr. Shiozawa's Cybozu Live top screen. He is currently running more than 10 groups.

Are there any requirements that Cybozu Live met for educational institutions to use Cybozu Live?

In a word, "stability" is the deciding factor. Stability can be explained from two aspects: "system" and "management organization.

The first point is about the system. I have used Cybozu Live for several months and found it to be very stable and easy to use at the business level, with almost no screen distractions. I thought that it could not be used at the business level.

Also, the Internet connection in Cambodia, where I was visiting as a volunteer, is very thin, but I was able to post and view comments without any difficulty from there. Cybozu Live's interface and button layout are being improved on a daily basis, and I felt that the basic aspects of usability and functionality are stable.

What do you mean by "governing body?"

The other is the stability of the company Cybozu, Inc. I used to stay in Silicon Valley for two years and have seen various startup businesses. The services created there make full use of the latest technology and change on a daily basis. As a user, I was looking forward to using those services.

However, it is impossible to know when the Internet service of a start-up company will be terminated. In such cases, it takes time and effort to utilize the information stored in the service. Considering the "business level" of university seminar operations and faculty communication, we have no choice but to conclude that an Internet service that may be terminated is "unusable.

In this respect, Cybozu Live is developed by Cybozu Inc., a major groupware provider in Japan that offers cybozu.com, a cloud service for companies. We appreciate the fact that a stable company has continued to provide this service for a long period of time.

Security is a concern for operations at the business level, but Cybozu has a proven track record with fee-based cloud services, so we can be confident that the service will be safe.

In your blog "Let's "De-Mail" with Cybozu Live", you mentioned the use of cloud services including messaging. What is your impression of the relationship between Cybozu Live and de-emailing?

I am proposing a "de-emailing" approach to information sharing at universities. This is because I believe that "if we are going to make use of IT, we should actively use something new and better than the old system of the 20th century. E-mail is a tool that everyone can use, but I feel it has disadvantages in the following points.

Important emails get buried.

Quoted replies" make it difficult for the recipient of a reply e-mail to grasp the flow of the discussion.

Line breaks commonly used in email are unnatural on non-PC smartphone and tablet screens, reducing legibility.

Not secured.

Quoted replies in e-mail, while necessary, are difficult to read, and unnecessary line breaks are a "bad habit" that reduces the productivity of the reader. However, despite these disadvantages, e-mail continues to be used in educational institutions.

Nowadays, smartphones and social networks are in common use, and the use of messaging tools has become routine. There seems to be less resistance to sharing information using Internet services.

Cybozu Live allows you to use the "Message" function for one-on-one communication, and if you have multiple members, you can create a "Group" to share information with all members. If you create a bulletin board for each topic you want to discuss, the information will not be buried like it is with e-mail.

I do not want to say "let's stop e-mail" at once, but I think it is wiser to move the place of communication to this kind of messaging tool. In this sense, "de-emailing" using Cybozu Live is expected to have excellent results.

So the architecture of e-mail is not suited for multi-person information sharing, and is more centered on collaborative tools such as messaging. What about the others?

There are other areas where I feel Cybozu Live is beneficial from the perspective of de-emailing. Although it is a free service, it does not display any advertisements. If advertisements were displayed, they would be annoying to the eyes, and it could lead to unintentional viewing of non-work related pages during work hours, which could reduce productivity.

One of the advantages of de-emailing is that it keeps spam mail, advertisements, and other information unrelated to business operations away. The fact that advertisements are not displayed is an important criterion for the adoption of Internet services.

What do you feel when you actually use Cybozu Live?

I am currently using Cybozu Live with several groups, and what I feel most is that it is a tool that inspires creativity in users. I think this is because of the graceful way of providing only the essential functions that are necessary.

By narrowing down the functionality to the bare essentials, the user can be creative in how he or she uses the product. Apple products, which I have been using since 1988, provide only essential functions and are easy for everyone to use. Also, Apple products can produce high quality output depending on the user's usage and creativity. This stimulates the minds of creators and creative workers.

Cybozu Live also has the creativity of an Apple product. Cybozu Live provides only basic functions in a simple way, which allows users to devise ways to use the service according to their purposes. I feel that development is done from the user's point of view, without any preconceived notions of "this service must be used this way.

What surprised me was how Dr. Kan Asahina uses the service in home healthcare. I was surprised to learn that Dr. Kan Asahina creates a group for each patient and invites only the care staff to share information with him. Cybozu Live must have a high affinity with Mac users.

Thank you very much. Finally, could you tell us about the future prospects for Dr. Shiozawa's efforts?

For more than a decade as a teacher, I have consistently held the belief that I want to arouse the creativity of students. This is because "education" means drawing out the potential of others. We want students to think, express, and act on their own, not by following suit. I am happy if I can bring out the creativity of students through jurisprudence.

（2012/04/09）

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