The Challenging Transition to Online Classes

The Japan Cultural Institute in Paris
FUJISAKI Yasunori, KONDO Yumiko

The Japan Cultural Institute in Paris runs a variety of Japanese-language education programs, but in this report, we will describe the changes we made to our existing programs in the face of the sudden need to transition to online.

1. Online Classes and Future Possibilities

The picture of an online class
An online class

From start to finish, the year 2020 was spent reacting to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a Japanese-Language Specialist (hereinafter “Specialist”), I was dispatched here to run the Japanese-language course at the Japan Cultural Institute in Paris (hereinafter “Institute”) in September 2020. There were many limits to what I could do while the lockdown was in place, such as being unable to meet with learners directly, so here I will describe how I made the online transition for the Japanese-language course and the problems that occurred when doing so, while also touching on our future outlook.

Before the lockdowns occurred, students were of course required to come to the Institute not only for classes, but class briefings and level assessments as well, but all of these activities had to be carried out online to prevent the spread of Covid-19 during the lockdowns. The handle that needs, we began using the Zoom online meeting application, which functions like teleconferencing, to hold our briefings and assessments.

Also, we began to use Zoom for classes as well. To prepare, we held an online meeting before the fall course to practice how to use Zoom with the teachers. We also held a session for students who were less technically inclined to practice how to use Zoom. For the first few weeks after the Japanese-language course began, we had a staff member with expertise in using zoom participate in the classes to provide technical support. While trouble did occur, such as when one teacher’s network connection was disconnected, interrupting the class, we have since lent them a replacement router to solve the issue. As the Specialist, we attended different classes to provide advice on teaching methods. Within several months, classes were being carried out smoothly thanks to the efforts of all the teachers. However, one thing that kept us busy looking for solutions until the end was perhaps the handling of homework. Our procedure for handling homework in the beginning was painstaking and troublesome, but we have since incorporated Google Classroom for the purpose, and now the process including assignment handout, correction, and submission is running smoothly.

The outcome of the transition to online classes has not been all bad. For example, the results of surveys on class satisfaction are now overwhelmingly positive. Furthermore, attendance now exceeds 90%, and classes are being run smoothly. We also get the strong sense from communication with the students that as people become separated from each other due to the lockdowns, the Japanese-language courses are taking on an importance that is greater than the study of Japanese language itself.

Though these online classes were started out of necessity, now that we have done so, they turn out to be highly convenient, and there are both students and teachers who hope to continue them. At the same time, there are others who would prefer to return to face to face courses. Accordingly, with respect for both opinions, we intend to continue to explore how these online classes can be used moving forward, and how the potential for online learning that we have discovered can be leveraged for the further development of Japanese-language education in France.

2. From a “Canceled Event” to an “Online Event”

Every winter, the Institute hosts an event called the “Interschool Presentation Day” (All-France High School Japanese Presentation Competition). The event involves teams of two or three French high school students studying the Japanese language to work together on presentations of roughly 15 minutes in length based on the theme of “connecting Japan and France.” Each team spends several months preparing for the competition in between their busy school schedules, including choosing the subject, gathering and analyzing data, designing their presentations, preparing the documentation, and practicing the presentations. Then on the day of the competition, the teams from different schools and grades all spend the day together with as equals who have struggled through the same amount of effort, having fun as they deepen their exchange. (See the report from 2019 for more details.)

A total of six teams in France and one guest team studying French in Japan started to prepare their presentations in 2019 for the conference scheduled for Saturday, March 14, 2020, with each presentation consisting of the team’s own idea on how to connect Japan and France. Sadly, shortly before the day, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of the event, despite the months of effort each team had spent preparing.

We as the organizers were also extremely disappointed, but we were overwhelmed with feelings of despair when we imagined how the high school students must have felt after all that preparation. Wondering if we could somehow still host the event remotely, we began planning to hold the event online roughly two months later. When we asked the teams whether to participate, five of them raised their hands. On the day, we decided to allow the teams the choice of preparing a video in advance to play back in lieu of giving the presentations in real time. The results of this policy were unique with each taking advantage of the online and video mediums in different ways, including a team that presented live, one that played a video created using avatars, and one that used a video showing photos along with their presentation slides. My hat goes off to the imagination of those high school students. Being able to work with everyone involved to create events like that while overcoming the unexpected challenges is surely one of the appeals of being a Japanese-Language Chief Advisor!

The picture of Interschool Presentation Day (All-France High School Japanese Presentation Competition) (Online)
Interschool Presentation Day (All-France High School Japanese Presentation Competition) (Online)

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