Speakers
Description
Our presentation details a Japanese language instructor / English language instructor collaboration between the Saitama and Tokyo campuses of an international university. Over the fall 2025 semester, students used pen and paper, online writing, and video exchanges to bridge the J-track and E-track communities, communicating in their target languages about themselves, their cultures, and course content topics. Student impressions through surveys and interviews and instructor reflections on the experience will also be presented.
Special scheduling requests
Sunday morning if possible; my co-presenter is presenting on Saturday.
Abstract
Ours is an international university, yet there has tended to be limited interaction between the Japanese students and the international students and between the Japanese and non-Japanese language instructors. Becoming increasingly aware of this ironic phenomenon and inspired to take the initiative to change it, a Japanese instructor and an English instructor have begun to work together to provide opportunities to break the ice and to create more opportunities to get to know each other and to help our Japanese and international students to bridge the gap between their communities. The presentation describes this collaboration and their students over the course of the Fall 2025 semester. Our culture and language exchange project was intended to serve three main purposes: 1) to enhance familiarity and collaboration between Japanese and international professors; 2) to strengthen the cultural, linguistic, and interpersonal bridges between the Japanese and international students to make the university a more unified international community; and 3) to provide target language practice incorporating the COIL philosophy of students’ using technology to learn content by exchanging ideas through their cultural perspectives in varied and enjoyable communication between the two classes. Attendees will gain insight into possible collaboration procedures, techniques for asynchronous communication among students at different campuses of the same university, and valuable takeaways from the experience through our own reflections and the students’ impressions of it as collected from pre- / post-project surveys and interviews.
References
COIL reference: The SUNY COIL Center
https://coil.suny.edu/
Short summary
Our presentation details a Japanese language instructor / English language instructor collaboration between the Saitama and Tokyo campuses of an international university. Over the fall 2025 semester, students used pen and paper, online writing, and video exchanges to bridge the J-track and E-track communities, communicating in their target languages about themselves, their cultures, and course content topics. Student impressions through surveys and interviews and instructor reflections on the experience will also be presented.
Keywords
collaboration
community-building
cultural exchange
| Scheduling preference | Special request (enter below) |
|---|---|
| Title | Building a University Community: Inter-class Collaboration and Exchange |