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Online Course – Learn how to summarize different opinions through Active Learning

Professor Nobuyuki Nomura teaches class on Human Behavioral Observation for Business, where first-year students explore possibilities for new marketing strategies through analysis of observation results. They examine what kind of environment potential product users live in, what customers have in mind when they are looking for specific goods or services, and so on. During today’s class, the students were asked to give a group presentation on the topic “How to make a better approach to social distancing”, after summarizing their opinions with a KJ Method.

What is a KJ Method?
It is business tool used to group and logically organize all ideas coming up during problem solving process, designed in a way which helps to provide a clear solution to that problem. It summarizes all types of information by grouping it on a piece of paper, utilizing arrow marks and so on.

Presentation and feedback


The students participating in the online class were divided into groups to tackle the problem. They collaborated by sharing their screens with Power Point files or whiteboards with opinions summed up to make the presentation easier to understand.
Then, the appointed representatives of each group gave a slide show on their ideas. They had kept in mind various pieces of advice from Professor Nomura, such as: “It is important to narrow down your target to a specific place, group or situation”, so they proposed different solutions for different age groups, ethnicities or time periods. One of the students voiced his opinion about smartphones changing the perception of distance, to which the Professor excitedly replied: “This notion (...) was brilliant. If you focus only on this topic and dig deeper, your presentation will get even better”.

A good share of students visibly struggled with the application of KJ method, yet owing to Professor’s feedback they managed to learn much about it. During the class one could see how eager some of them were to brush up their presentations according to Professor’s suggestions. It is truly marvellous to see our freshmen face challenges during classes with such positive attitude and grow by overcoming them.