Nakatani Sumie (Professor) Kagoshima University
Kaneshiro Itoe (Associate Professor) Faculty of law & Literature, Kagoshima University
Heather Linville (Associate Professor/TESOL Director) University of Wisconsin, La Crosse
In the Fall 2020 semester, the “Education, Culture and Identity among the Minorities Course” within the Kagoshima University’s US-Kagoshima-Asia Triad Program in a Multi-polar collaborated using the COIL methodology, with students studying education as their major from the University of Wisconsin La Crosse (UWL) over the course of about eight weeks.
The theme for the COIL program was to compare the issues of “Immigration and Education” in Japan and the U.S.A. The classes were conducted in Japanese, but lectures and presentations delivered to the partner universities were conducted in English. We discussed education and the role of local communities in the acceptance of foreign workers, which has become a particularly important issue in recent years as globalization progresses.
Due to the 14-hour time difference between Kagoshima, Japan and Wisconsin, USA, we had no choice but to hold the COIL classes asynchronously. The COIL teaching component made use of Kagoshima University’s MANABA platform for sharing information about lectures, as well as ZOOM for online classes.
For assignments and presentations, it was decided that Flipgrid would be used by students to generate their presentations as videos, and then uploaded. Students would then view the videos and give their opinions and exchange ideas by making comments on the videos.
Fli pgrid.
A total of 4 Kagoshima University students and 19 UWL students participated. Students were assigned to four groups, with at least 1 Kagoshima University student present in each group.
To get through the cultural divide and get to know each other, students were first asked to make a short (1~2minute) self-introduction video about themselves. For the second assignment they were asked to make a short video (5 minutes max) dealing with COVID-19 & Education.
