DIVERSIFYING INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE PROGRAMS: A CASE STUDY FROM TOKUSHIMA UNIVERSITY, JAPAN

In response to increasing demand for globally minded talent, the Japanese government and its educational institutions are encouraging Japanese students to study abroad. This paper describes how a national university in Japan has promoted international exchange by organizing two types of study abroad programs with partner universities in Australia, the USA and Latvia. In Australia and the USA, study programs involved classroom activities for the most part; in Latvia, the study program took the form of project based learning (PBL) that focused less on classroom activities and more on inter-cultural communication with students from partner universities and on activities such as A/V presentations related to life in Japan, cooking and tourism. In addition to describing programs that took place in August and September, 2017, this paper shows how program participants changed attitudes towards learning English and developing a sense of responsibility.