Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has influenced many aspects of tertiary educational institutions in Japan. Many Self-Access Learning Centers (SALCs) at universities are also required to change their operation and support systems. This paper introduces how the SALC at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) has supported students during the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses successful points and limitations of the online support system, which is characterized as emergency remote support (ERS). The research analyzes survey and interview data collected from five Japanese peer advisors (PAs) who work at the SALC. We find that ERS at the SALC can sufficiently provide students with individual support in learning and practicing languages as well as some psychological support via a videoconferencing tool. However, we also identify that ERS cannot create an environment for socialization and social learning compared to the usual SALC in which students gather and socialize with others freely while developing their language and communication abilities.
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has influenced many aspects of tertiary educational institutions in Japan
This paper describes how the Self-Access Learning Center (SALC) at Asia Pacific University (APU) has organized the online support system during this pandemic situation and discusses successful points and limitations of the online support system using survey and interview data collected from five Japanese peer advisors (PAs) who work at the SALC
We offered students emergency remote support (ERS) at the SALC, which is characterized as a temporary shift of the SALC support system during the emergency situation to support students in learning languages
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has influenced many aspects of tertiary educational institutions in Japan. The SALC at APU is designed to deliver face-to-face support including individual support sessions with PAs, individual consultations with learning advisors (LAs), and both academic and social events. In addition to the spaces for individual support sessions with PAs and consultations with LAs, the SALC has study and social spaces in order to provide students with a variety of resources and opportunities to learn and use languages while informally interacting with fellow students, PAs, LAs, and teachers. Because of friendly professional PAs, many students repeatedly visit the SALC to use individual support sessions with PAs and join events In this COVID-19 pandemic, the SALC decided to operate the support online mainly using Zoom except the Chinese support, which was cancelled.
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