King Saud University
YONEDA Akihisa

The Night of March 6, 2020

The postponement of the 11th Japanese Speech Contest was announced. It was the night before the contest. One of the themes of this contest was “work.” I was looking forward to hearing what people thought about “work” in Saudi Arabia, where society has been undergoing major change in the last few years. The postponement came while the students of King Saud University were practicing for the contest.

March 8

When I met the students during class at the University, they were disappointed: “Even though we’d prepared especially for it...”

March 9

Saudi Arabia made the decision for all pupils and students in educational institutions across the country to stay at home. At the same time, the University instructed us to carry out remote classes from the following week. A variety of things were suddenly decided—it was a week of surprises.

The class before they started staying home

March 10–12

Although we had been instructed to hold remote classes, the majority of the teaching staff, including me, had never given a remote lesson, and so study sessions for staff covering learning management systems and web conference tools were started in the University. While the students waited at home, the staff members gathered in cramped classrooms to receive intensive explanations of new tools. It made me uneasy thinking that “Was my brain overheating with the loaded content?”, “Was it hot because of the crowd of people?”, “Was this okay?”—but the preparation time passed before I could think. There were a lot of people among the staff who weren’t familiar with holding classes using ICT, and they asked how to proceed with lessons, etc. It wasn’t like I had any kind of detailed knowledge on this, so if there is a thing that I didn't know, I took it back with me as homework and shared what I had researched the following day. I think that my “support” was a little unreliable as a Japanese-Language Specialist, but I continued to do what I could every day.

March 15

All of the teaching staff started holding remote lessons from home. I think receiving their lessons from home was probably a first for almost all of the students. For a short while, there were things that we weren’t used to and we were unable to hold classes as normal. There was a lot of dissatisfaction—some teachers were uneasy because they could no longer see the students’ faces, and the students suffered from continuing to sit in front of their computers or cell phones the whole time; I heard people voice the opinion that “classrooms are better, after all.”

A remote class

Despite this, we gradually started to feel the good points. Commute times had been long, so remote classes enable people to use their time more efficiently than before. Additionally, class styles have changed—for example, the students can listen to their listening teaching materials at their own individual paces, which wasn’t possible in a classroom lesson for everyone together.

There was one unexpected event during a remote class. When I was running a class, I could hear a woman’s voice (women and men have separate classes in King Saud University). It was only for a moment. I think it's likely that she had heard information about the online class from someone and joined in out of curiosity. There was a commotion among the students, but I felt potential.

As I have written in the past, there are no higher educational institutions in which women can study the Japanese language in Saudi Arabia. However, there are a lot of women who want to study the Japanese language. Until now, there have been cultural circumstances, as well as difficulties in retaining female staff members, creating a context in which there are issues establishing a Japanese faculty or department in which women can study. I believe that it was possible to teach/learn Japanese remotely using technology before now, but before 2020, this was treated as a special trial. In contrast, I think it will be easier for people to select remote classes as an option from now on.