Online Education, Without Compromise: Hoshi Tomohiro / Head of School, Stanford Online High School

"Direct Talk"

Our guest today is Hoshi Tomohiro,

the head of Stanford Online High School.

Founded in 2006,

the school is one of the pioneers in the field of remote education.

In 2016, Hoshi was named Head of School there.

In recent years, it's been ranked one of the top private high schools

in the US among all schools, not just online ones.

As a result, the world-class education offered by Stanford OHS

is now drawing attention well beyond the US.

How does Hoshi ensure that his students learn effectively,

without being in the same physical classroom?

We ask him about the realities of education today

and the possibilities created by online instruction.

I think the society is more quickly changing and evolving than previously now.

So the students need to be able to adjust themselves

to the changes of the world very quickly,

and also change their perspectives to be able to survive the changes in the world.

I'd like to help students develop the ability to,

so to speak, transcend their current framework of thinking

to be able to create new perspectives and new platforms for the future.

Silicon Valley, in California.

This is the home of Stanford University,

as well as a high school established by Stanford in 2006

with the aim of offering world-class education on an online platform.

The school serves grades 7 through 12,

with about 900 students from 43 different countries.

Many graduates go on to attend Harvard, Stanford, Oxford,

and other leading universities in America and beyond.

Here's a look at an online class.

"Harley, your answer was correct. Can you say what you said in the poll?"

"When the protein falls and the hydrophobic amino acids

and the hydrophobic acids are shielded by the hydrophilic one…"

All the students are logged in from home or elsewhere,

and all of them are actively participating.

For online education, definitely one of the greatest benefits

is that students can connect wherever they are.

We can't really have an environment where

multiple people are speaking at the same time.

So students quickly adapt to that environment,

as a result of which they learn how to listen

to people who are speaking.

One longstanding problem with online learning

has been low course completion and graduation rates.

Hoshi and his colleagues believed the cause was weak connections

between students and teachers, as well as between students themselves.

And so they adopted a "flipped classroom" model.

In a conventional classroom,

the teacher lectures or offers direct instruction.

In a flipped classroom, students prepare the content,

and facilitate dynamic discussions in small groups.

The completion rate of our school is about 100%.

In an online environment, students can feel less connected

and can be less engaged

unless we make some special efforts.

But the flipped classroom is going to ensure

that students actively engage with each other while they are online together,

instead of listening to a long lecture from a teacher.

Students who want to speak during class press the "raise hand" button

and wait to be called on.

The teacher can send individual chat messages to quieter students,

encouraging them to chime in.

When students are shy in a classroom environment,

they might be able to use text chat just to start with,

and gradually, maybe, eventually speak on microphone.

So that's a way to fit the communication opportunity to the students' needs.

Today Hoshi is the leader of a school earning praise around the world.

But he would describe the first half of his life as a series of failures.

He won a place in the ultra-competitive School of Science

at the University of Tokyo.

But once there, he almost never went to class,

spending his days on gambling and side hustles.

Going, or being accepted, to that particular university

was the goal itself, and I really didn't have any associated purposes.

So once I got into that college, I really lost my purpose,

so didn't really have intention or motivation to,

stay connected in the university.

Unable to keep up with the hard science classes,

he changed his major to philosophy.

But even then, he didn't start going to class.

One day, as he was sitting at his usual gambling table,

he received a fateful phone call from a gambling buddy

who also attended the University of Tokyo.

The friend told Hoshi that he had just secured a great job offer.

I felt, "Well, this is not good."

I felt that at that point, "Oh, I need to change my lifestyle or life,"

but I really didn't know how and I really couldn't change myself.

Wanting to escape Japan, Hoshi went to study in the US.

He enrolled in a master's program at Texas A&M University,

treating it as a fresh start to his philosophy studies.

When that was done, he started a PhD program in philosophy at Stanford.

In 2008, after finishing his doctorate,

Hoshi joined an interesting project, Stanford Online High School.

At that point, the school was only in its second year.

It had about ten students.

Early 2000, there was a surge of online education,

coming, particularly in the Bay area.

Online education seemed to be very interesting.

So I wanted to do that, which happens to be this project

of starting up an online high school within Stanford.

Hoshi and his colleagues made some bold proposals.

Classes would be organized by ability rather than grade level,

and lessons would be tailored to each student.

There would be no big exams, and classrooms would be "flipped".

The teachers had no hesitation about upending old-fashioned ideas and methods.

Projects are done and the papers are written by our students in such a way that

they get support from teachers from the beginning

to the end of the project or papers.

And even when they are finished, they get certain comments and

assessment by the teachers,

based on which students are given opportunities to revise their papers

or modify their projects, and then they can get reassessed.

If there is an opportunity for students to rework on those problems,

and if students get a better mark,

then the student might be able to have the sense of "Oh okay, I'm making some progress.

So it's not just my inborn ability that we,

I can't do math, but I can actually improve."

I definitely would like to promote student's autonomy,

in being able to choose what they would like to learn

and being able to pursue their own life goals.

At Stanford OHS, students can choose from about 150 courses.

But there is one group of mandatory core classes,

one of which includes Hoshi's specialty, philosophy.

Students should, if they can, start early to

get used to the way of thinking in philosophy, because,

philosophy is to question the existing assumptions or framework

that people might not intentionally think about,

in a normal way of life, to come up with new perspectives and values.

We need to live a good life in the society,

we need to push ourselves into a certain frame of mind,

a frame of thinking, or a frame of values.

But those things change, right?

Particularly quickly nowadays.

So we would like to help students to develop the skills to adjust to new perspectives.

And not only that, the ability to create a new platform on their own.

That's why we would like to have philosophy as a central part of our program.

Akita, in northeast Japan.

It's home to Horiuchi Nono,

a student enrolled at Stanford Online High School.

Today, she has philosophy class.

"I'm confused, is what I have realized."

"And that is where I will end, okay."

"So that's good."

"That's philosophy."

Horiuchi started at Stanford OHS at age 15.

She says that this philosophy class was confusing at first.

Before I truly started understanding philosophy,

I felt a disconnect between me and my peers because we were

since my school is online everyone is from different countries across the world.

But once I started learning philosophy and learning these different,

learning to accept these different perspectives while still having my own perspective,

I was able to communicate with my peers more.

And so that leads to more creative approaches, different ways of thinking.

Learning philosophy has been pretty much life-changing for me.

At Stanford OHS, nothing is more important than supporting the students.

Each student is assigned three different specialists to help them,

an academic counselor, a mental health counselor,

and a career guidance counselor.

Particularly as we are in the online environment,

students might feel somewhat uncomfortable connecting with one adult,

right, who might be a counselor.

So we wanted to have more people working with students to avoid the situation

where a student might not click well with a counselor,

and then that student might unfortunately need to have a hard time, right?

But then maybe there are two other people,

so they may have some opportunities to connect better.

If we have three people assigned to a student,

we can have less of those unfortunate situations, possibly.

Hoshi was named Head of School in 2016.

Despite being online, Stanford OHS has appeared on lists

of the top 10 private high schools in the US.

As COVID-19 urgently increased the need for remote learning,

Hoshi has been recognized as a global leader in online education.

What I think Stanford Online High School has achieved

is to demonstrate that great education or premium kind of education,

if we wish, is possible online.

Hoshi sees great potential for the future of online learning.

Recently, the world has seen rising demand for lifelong educational opportunities.

He says online education can play a huge role in this.

Future education really demands

equal opportunities for people of different ages,

throughout their lives.

So after 18 or 20's, 22 years old, right?

Younger people become adults and they don't have to study, right?

That's no longer the case.

So I definitely would like to make education more accessible

as well as sustainable over different ages,

different circumstances,

and different cultural background and competencies.

(Do you have any words to live by?)

"Remain calm. Be kind."

My favorite words from Colin Powell.

Being the head of school in a school

where we support thousands of students and families,

it's a major part of their lives.

And there are lots of challenges and great things at the same time.

So I want to be really calm in, against any kind of challenges,

but at the same time,

I would like to really promote this altruistic mindset for our students.

So to be a good model for the school,

I would like to promote the idea of compassion,

and also be kind and connecting students and the people in our community.