Instructors: Mamoru Fujita, Senior Assistant Professor, and others
How many students were enrolled?
A total of about 125 students in the Intensive, Basic, Skill, and Contents courses.
What was the class format?
Live (using Zoom, Webex Meeting, or Webex Training)
It seems you have implemented various initiatives unique to online language classes. Could you please tell us more about the specific aims and content of these initiatives?
We created a workspace for each course on Slack and guided students there, creating an environment where they could easily ask for advice and ask questions on a daily basis, while also enabling a speedy response to any unexpected situations. By creating a space where up to four instructors, SAs, and TAs could meet together, it became easier to coordinate the entire class. In addition, depending on the course, we set up informal chat sessions on Zoom and other platforms outside of class to support relationship-building between new and current students, as well as among current students from different courses.
Please tell us about the students' reactions and the effects of these initiatives.
Because we emphasized interactivity, the overall satisfaction of the students was high, and I think it became easier to respond to the diverse needs of the students. Since we were able to enter the spring semester with sufficient advance practice, including part-time faculty members, I believe that issues such as platform malfunctions were received with relative tolerance. In addition, new students who started at a higher level after taking a qualification exam (placement test) said that they were able to connect with current students and felt much more comfortable in that particular course.