The Emergency Remote Graduation Seminar: Challenges and Insights

The Emergency Remote Graduation Seminar: Challenges and Insights

Caroline Hutchinson

Nihon University College of Economics

In February 2020, I was preparing to teach my first cohort of a three-year English-Medium graduation seminar (‘Zemi’) at a Japanese university. Often considered a unique Japanese institution, Zemi involve professors mentoring students to pursue research into their academic specialism, and typically also have a strong social or pastoral element.

As one of the few non-Japanese professors in my faculty, I had no prior experience of the Zemi system. I was unsure how much freedom or support to give students. How academic should the course be, considering that we were aiming to produce research in English? It turned out that I was not alone - at a conference, I discovered that there was a wider community of non-Japanese educators with similar concerns.

In March 2020, everything changed. The global spread of the novel coronavirus led my university to move all courses online; we have yet to return to in-person teaching. As a result, three semesters passed with my specific course-related anxiety supplanted by the broader context of emergency remote teaching. In this presentation, I will consider how this influenced course design, pedagogy, student interaction and assessment. I will also reflect on what worked and what I hope to improve in future.

Finally, I will consider future questions, such as how to build a safe social element and support exchange between academic years, maintaining motivation, and the challenge of guiding students through research and production of their graduation thesis.