Three countries, one common concern

The School of Education, Apeejay Stya University and With the World, a Japanese educational organisation, headquartered in Kobe City, have joined hands to come up with an innovative online international student exchange programme.

Apart from the students from India and Japan, students from Hasanuddin University and Muhammadiyah University from Indonesia are also participating in the event. The exchange programme is a three-day virtual event taking place from September 20 to 24, with a rest day in between.

The first day of the event included a highly interactive session as students from India (ASU), Japan and Indonesia interacted in different breakout rooms, discussing their hobbies, career prospects and the different aspects of their cultures. It was an ice-breaking session for the students.

Explained Programme coordinator Dr. Vijay Kumar, Assistant Professor, School of Education, ASU, “Such exchange programmes pave the way for students to understand the cultures of different nations. It expands the horizons of their minds and shapes their global vision.”

The students appear to have appreciated the content and format of the programme.

“From this event I got to know about students from Japan and Indonesia. We gave our introductions and shared our future objectives. Then we discussed the most preferred profession in each country in which the profession of a doctor was common ,” said Archita Ranjan, a second year student of BA LLB, who participated in the workshop. “On the second day, we discussed women’s rights and gender inequality in our respective countries. At the end we discussed the most important factors and priorities of our lives. In this I came across three common points on which we agreed. We belonged to three different countries but we had the same priorities (career, family and health),” added Ranjan.

 The students exchanged their views about seeking employment in the job market and career prospects on the second day of the event. As a part of the project based-learning workshop (PBL), they analysed factors such as family, job, relationships, health and finances through pie-charts. They assigned space to the factors in accordance with their degree of importance in their lives.

Day 3 of the exchange programme will include a discussion on whether the students would like to have their dream job, one that includes working beyond shift hours, or take up a job not of their choice but one that gives enough time to pursue other interests of life. Students will also discuss reasons behind placing a certain life factor as the most important.

“We always believe in providing quality learning opportunities and experiences of international benchmarks to our students. Through such international exchange programmes, our students get opportunities to interact with the learners from different parts of the world. Their thought process gets developed as they come to know about the culture of various countries, various issues and challenges being faced by people in different countries and the ways with which they try to tackle them. So it, in a way, leads to a holistic education of our students which is the core of ASU’s Liberal Arts Approach to education. During this year only, our students have interacted with students from Japan, Philippines, Indonesia and Nepal in such exchange programmes. We want to further expand it”

–Dr. Vijay Kumar, Teacher Educator, School of Education and Programme Coordinator, National Service Scheme and Rotaract Club of ASU.