The final discussion of everyone’s conversations at the end was really good! It allowed everyone to gain the same cultural knowledge, even if they hadn’t taken part in those conversations.
Every year, Kent students who study Japanese join the Global Learning Online (GLO) programme with Tamagawa University in Japan.
GLO is a co-curricular virtual exchange initiative which has been devised to introduce students at Kent to cross-cultural academic learning experiences online to compliment their existing studies.
This year, seven students participated the programme and enjoyed communicating and exchanging their interests and cultures with 8 Japanese students at Tamagawa. Sessions were held on an online virtual space called SpatialChat. Students were able to move around the virtual space freely, introducing themselves to each other and casually chatting in English and Japanese. In the final session students formed groups of six based on their cultural interests and discussed topics such as music, film, food, festivals, travel and their cultural differences. At the end of the programme, students exchanged their social media accounts, with the aim to keep in touch and enjoy having friends beyond countries.
The feedback from was tremendously positive with students reporting that ‘It helped to improve my intercultural skills.’