Kyoto University Library Network - Special Event: Interview to Prof. Hajime Kita

Special Event: Interview to Prof. Hajime Kita

After the publication on February 2020, an educational material for programming,"Programming Practice with Python 2019 (in Japanese)" has been met with a great response, with the number of downloads being the highest ever in KURENAI. We interviewed to the author, Prof. Hajime Kita (Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences), about publishing educational materials on KURENAI. (Oct 22th 2020)

Q1. What makes you publish your educational materials on KURENAI?

In Kyoto University, there are two systems for systematically publishing educational materials, such as OpenCourseWare and KURENAI. Although I considered which system to publish my materials on, I was told that KURENAI allows my materials open access and manages them as more accessible academic resources. Therefore, I decided to publish my materials on KURENAI.
Prior to the publication of the Programming Practice with Python 2019, The Practice of Basic Informatics 2019 written by Dr. Yumi Kitamura (the Kyoto University Library) is also published on KURENAI.

Q2. The publishment of your educational material on KURENAI has been met with a great response, with the number of downloads being the highest ever in KURENAI. What kind of reactions have you received directly or indirectly from the faculty members? Also, how do you feel about them?

A faculty member asked me to write a book for Python, like the C programming workbook, learning in SHAKYO style that I previously wrote. So, I compiled it as the textbook for my lecture in 2019, based on my experience of the lecture in 2018. After completing the 2019 lecture, I corrected any mistakes I noticed in the lecture and published it on KURENAI. When I told the publication to him, he mentioned about it on the social media, which caused a great reaction. I was told that there were quite a few typos, but I'm glad that I published it as the majority of the comments were positive.

Q3. What do you think the significance to publish educational materials on KURENAI?

Teaching programming to beginners is both a lecture practice and a research topic of mine. Although it is not in the form of a paper, it has the significance of being an achievement.
For me, publishing on KURENAI is a way of raising questions on the being of textbooks in university. In 2002, during a previous work, I visited the Open University (OU) in the UK to an interview. I was told that "The textbooks in the Open University are the teachers." Although teachers decide what academic contents to be included in the books, it is the editor's job to provide it to students. This interview hit my heart and became consider the being of textbooks.
In 2003, I began belonging to Kyoto University. Since the same time, the trend towards open education has been rising, driven by initiatives including OpenCourseWare in MIT. Kyoto University has been actively working on projects such as OpenCourseWare and KyotoUx. However, unfortunately, this trend have not necessarily developed into a major initiative in Japan.
On the other hand, there seems to be a preconception that university textbooks are "made by publishers," despite many teachers write the textbooks themselves. As a result, for example in my discipline, the price is first determined to be around 3,000 yen due to distribution restrictions in the market, and the number of circulation is determined around 1,000. Under the restrictions, a feasible proposal of the formats from the publishers is A5 size, 200 pages and black and white printing.
This may be fine for content that a faculty member lectures over 15 classes (30 hours in total), but it does not include enough content to support two credits of students, 90 hours of study (60 hours outside of class), as proposed in the standards for establishment of universities.
Therefore, I wanted to demonstrate that by making textbooks publicly available, publishers are freed from the distribution restrictions, while making them available to students free of charge.
However, as I interviewed at the OU, this is of course not to say that publishers are unnecessary. In particular, I greatly expect for publishers their editorial expertise and skills.
The previous textbook that I wrote entitled the "Practice of Basic Informatics" was published, which one of the contents is to teach how to use a word processor to produce academic documents. Since I also wanted to raise an example, I published the textbook making heavy use of the functions in the word processor such as templates. I was able to write the Python textbook thanks to that preparation, but there are still many typos and some sentences that are difficult to read. So, I would like to ask the publisher to edit them.
In the case of university textbooks, as we saw earlier, the total amount of money involved in publishing one book is by no means large. In that case, I think it would be entirely possible for the university to cover the publishing costs and it allow the university to make the electronic version of the textbook available free of charge instead.

Q4. Do you have an idea which expect for or installed into KURENAI in the future?

The repository is an essential infrastructure that supports the activities of the university, so first of all, I would like the continuous maintenance and operation.
Currently, the data is digitized, but most of them is document data. In the future, the media handled will become more diverse, including video and research data. Compared to documents, these will be more challenging to handle permanently, so I hope the careful consideration how to preserve them.
As for some contents that that makes public, we may be faced with social issues. I understand that this will cause difficulties for those in the disciplines, but I believe it is also important for the faculty members to understand the background what goes on.
Furthermore, I would like KURENAI to see the relationship with the Research Resource Archive operated by the Kyoto University Museum, be effectively explained to users, producing a synergistic effect.

Q5. We are appreciate if you have a message to the researchers whom it may concerns of publishing their outputs on KURENAI.

Although the way of open in research outputs varies among the disciplines, I hope that the significance and benefit of publishing them on KURENAI will be recognized for researchers.

Thank you very much for the invaluable comments which may provide the further developments to KURENAI.
KURENAI will contribute to open science by making a variety of research and educational outputs, including articles and educational materials, open access. We hope you will make active use of KURENAI.

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