There is a news report about a student at Waseda University who lost credits for watching multiple online classes at the same time.

I'm sure there are a lot of opinions on this issue, but first of all, if they were notified of this (prohibition of watching multiple online classes at the same time) in advance, this is a natural punishment (However, I have not been able to confirm this at this time).

On the other hand, I found this issue to be a very interesting thesis.

I would like to discuss two points below.

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First, I'm doing this kind of thing myself, in remote operations.

Depending on the importance of the meeting, the relation about me , and the nature of your work, there are some things that can be done in parallel and some things that cannot.

For example, I don't (and can't) work in parallel on meetings that are related to my budget and business, because I would be 'choking myself' if I missed them.

However, during other meetings, if it's just simple data processing, I usually do parallel processing.

To put it bluntly, it's about as "fast" as data processing can get.

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Secondly -- in reality, there are people (especially young people) who have the ability to watch multiple online classes simultaneously.

This is my daughter's story. I was reprimanding her for studying math and English while watching videos on YouTube (NOT listening to music).

"My daughter can really 'do' those things."

From what I have observed, she does not seem to be losing performance, in fact, she even seems to have the advantage of being able to maintain her performance for a long time.

After that, I stopped interfering in the way my daughters studied.

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What I'm trying to say is, with my observation,

"With the times and the environment (YouTube, PCs, smartphones, corona disasters), brain function is changing dramatically."

might be true.

However, I don't know if it can be applied to all young people.

This is something I hope to see in future research and experiments in the field of brain science.

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I think there are also two reasons for the rule against simultaneous viewing

(1)A problem in the attitude of those who study.

This is a reason that makes sense.

If you say that this is a "principle of the mode of communication between the teacher and the taught," you are right.

However, I think this issue would be grossly unfair if they don't also discuss the attitude of those who 'teach' academics, and whether they are able to provide classes with content that attracts students.

In fact, I think the "boringness" of the content (presentation) of Japanese teachers' classes could be a social problem (it was in my day).

(2) A problem of degradation of performance in acquiring studies

As I mentioned above, my (limited) observations have raised doubts about this.

I believe that proper research and study will be necessary in the future.

By underestimating students' abilities (performance), we may be destroying the potential of future students.

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I think the root of this problem is "previous performance/experience" and "unpleasantness".

However, as mentioned above, the direction of human ability changes with time and environment.

In that case, I believe it is necessary to "bend by force" the "previous achievements/experiences" and "unpleasantness" as well.