CASTALIA’S Educhat INSTALLED UNIVERSITY WIDE AT JOETSU UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

For use in lectures as well as an internal communication center

Castalia Co., Ltd. (CEO: Satoshi Yamawaki, registered head office: Shiojiri, Nagano Prefecture / head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo) brought Educhat, an online chatting service dedicated to educational use, into university-wide installation at Joetsu University of Education (JUEN), a national university headquartered in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture.  The system will be launched in full scale in September 2020.

Educhat is a chatting service which customizes Mattermost, an online chatting software for enterprises, for educational use. 

Castalia launched a feasibility study of Educhat in May 2020 as a joint project with Professor Yasumasa Oomori of JUEN.  We developed educational methods through synchronous and non-synchronous chatting, conducted an attitude survey on the students’ participation, and cultivated an educational method unique to online lectures.  We also simulated server loads and network circumstances to see how chatting services could be used in real-time education.  

This time, Educhat will be introduced to the entire faculty and students at the university and will be used for online video lectures and as an internal communication center.  In the future, we will coordinate it with external services as well as introduce AI Bot functionalities.  


[Educhat]
Educhat is an online chatting service system dedicated to educational use, based on Mattermost, an online chatting/messaging software that enables business uses of online collaboration.  To optimize for educational use, we have enhanced functions such as security and online lecture tools.
https://www.castalia.co.jp/educhat

[Mattermost]
Mattermost is an online chatting and messaging service for enterprises. It is developed and distributed by Mattermost Inc. based in the U.S. The service spurs an increase in internal communications and at the same time facilitate remote work. Its open-source project is simultaneously in progress and it has also been used around the globe as a free server software.
Mattermost has been introduced in public institutions such as the U.S. Social Security Adminstration, world-renowned corporations such as Samsung and Bristol-Myers Scribb to name a few. As for educational use, National University of Singapore and University of British Columbia, Canada are some of the institutions that have introduced Mattermost. Mattermost is made more affordable for educational institutions compared to other services.
https://mattermost.com/

[Joetsu University of Education]
Joetsu University of Education is a national university corporation located in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture, aimed at the fostering of teachers.  As of May 2019, it is home to 1,211 students and 311 faculty members.
http://www.juen.ac.jp/