Abstract:

In the recent years, both the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education or Högskoleverket (HSV) and individual universities in Sweden have been promoting “internationalization at home.” In an attempt to make it possible for all the students to be part of internationalization regardless of their financial, family and other situations that prevent them from studying abroad, I have brought a virtual international classroom to the students studying Japanese. The initial pilot study was conducted to examine the interactions during online joint-seminars with overseas students. In order to eventually create an ideal virtual classroom environment in an international setting, I focused on finding answers to the following three questions: (1) How do the students from different countries interact during on-line video conferencing seminars? (2) What can teachers do to make the students feel comfortable in such seminars and maximize learning? (3) Do functions such as ‘Chat’ that are available in the video-conferencing system Adobe® Connect™ help improve communication between students from both countries? In the study conducted during the spring 2012 term, I examined the students’ interactions during the joint-seminars using a video conferencing system. I analyzed not only the conversation during the online-seminars but also the chat during the seminars and blog entries as well as comments outside the class to see how they compliment the verbal communication. The positive feedback from the participating students indicates that, through interactions with university students from other countries who study Japanese at the same level, the students can gain not only Japanese skills, but also expand their horizons and deepen their understanding of another culture as well as the topics discussed during the meetings. The success of the initial pilot study implies a great potential in internet-based university education contributing to ‘internationalization at home’.

Keywords:

Internationalization, e-learning, video-conferencing, Japanese.