午夜剧场

As part of my duties at the university, I have been in charge of international collaboration and the acceptance and promotion of study abroad and training programs for the past few years. Recently, through my academic affairs work, I have often reaffirmed the importance of human-to-human connections (sometimes across borders), which has been very encouraging.

Travel for students and researchers has been significantly restricted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since last spring, exchange programs and visiting study programs have unfortunately been cancelled or postponed across the board. A sense of apprehension that resuming international educational exchange would be difficult drifted among my colleagues.

In such a pessimistic situation, I was asked by several partner universities in Japan to provide "virtual training programs." Programs that learn about Hawaii's history, culture, environment, and sustainability issues through university education, student exchange, and visits to related facilities in the state had previously been offered as 1-3 week on-site training. Now, we were to conduct such programs online. While it seemed effective for sustaining difficult international exchanges, we designed and implemented the program amidst concerns about whether such a virtual program would actually be attractive to Japanese students. Voices of concern were raised from both inside and outside, saying, "I think everyone likes Hawaii, but won't they feel it's meaningless if they don't actually go there?"

I participated in the online classroom of the program as a facilitator and lecturer, and I received surprisingly positive and passionate feedback from the participating students. Learning about topics that Japan also faces, such as the background and challenges of the large-scale introduction of renewable energy in Hawaii and the economic effects of sea-level rise due to global warming, seems to be of great interest.

Many participants emphasized two other points in their post-program evaluations. One is the joy of conveying their thoughts in English to students and faculty from other universities. The fact that we were able to ensure opportunities for even usually reserved students to speak online may be the reason for the positive evaluation. The other is that the opportunity for dialogue with University of Hawaii students via Zoom was very good. Interaction with students from different cultural backgrounds seems to have been stimulating.

Although I offered the online training with half-doubts, the Japanese students who participated made me re-recognize the importance of international exchange in maintaining and expanding human connections.