In January 2021, I started as Scientific Supervisor and Manager the project “A Multidimensional Website Project to Improve Japanese Language and IT Skills – Collaborative Creativity in Response to COVID-19”, funded by the Japan Foundation through the Italian Institute for Japanese Culture (Istituto Giapponese di Cultura in Roma, €15.000). As of today, 1 Coordinator (M.A. Federica Tocci), 1 Senior trainee (Ms. Giulia Verzini), and 2 trainees (Mr. Simone Albesano, and Mr. Tommaso Cavalieri) are collaborating with 31 students from Master and Bachelor courses in Japanese Studies to update, review, and promoting Jalea, Jalea Business and A4EDU as exceptional useful tools to study Japanese in and outside the classroms.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a general lockdown has been imposed on Italy since March until the end May 2020. Because of such drastic measures, face-to-face teaching has been suspended nationwide, making it impossible for students of Japanese language enrolled at Ca’ Foscari University to participate in classroom activities together with their teachers and colleagues, as well as to pursue their studies abroad. Moreover, companies started to cut down on the number of people they were hiring and stopped their internship programs and the students also lost that opportunity.

Since I am in charge of the internship program for Japan area at the Department of Asian and African Studies, I found our students struggling to find an internship for their university career (mandatory for graduation). Since March 2020 then,  we offered them the opportunity to collaborate with Jalea Team to our departmental Japanese e-Learning platforms: Jalea, Jalea Business and the Japanese-Italia online dictionary a4edu. We hoped to foster students motivation to proceed on their studies, too often undermined not only by the mental fatigue accumulated through these emergency measures, but also by the sudden shift to remote teaching and learning. 

The urgent situation in March 2020, saw around 25 students willing to participate in the Departmental e-learning, and Federica Tocci supported us for the daily activities, such as conducting online briefing session, compiling and analyzing any data/information related to project implementation, contributing the development of any documentation generated for/by the project (PPT presentations, project briefs, etc.). In July and September 2020 we had two more internship sessions and this time 52 students applied for our program. As the number increased we decided to divide students into multiple work groups. Federica carried out her work coordinating a total of 35 students, 20 collaborating with the online dictionary a4edu and 15 with Jalea Business. In addition, Ms. Giulia Verzini joined us in October 2020 as trainee helping in coordinating the activities of 17 students focusing on Jalea grammar items. Between March and October 2020, more than 77 students were able to acquire skills in IT, Japanese Grammar, SNS, video editing and more, through these formative activities.

During the same period, October 2020, Federica and I started collaborated to the COIL Ca’ Foscari -Hosei Online Collaborative Learning Project invited by Professor Akiko Murata from Hosei University (Tokyo, Japan). 21 students from both universities worked on Social Innovations ideas, grounded on the 2030 SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals and Social Innovation. Thanks to Professor Murata I descovered the Japan Foundation Grant Program for Enhancing People-to-People Exchange [Special Program in response to COVID-19] supporting new activities in response to Covid-19 such as preparation and training for online lessons/events/teaching materials, implemented by overseas organizations involved in Japanese-language education.

It was the perfect time to better formulate the formative path to strenghten linguistic and IT competence of Ca’ Foscari Japanese students, submitting “A Multidimensional Website Project to Improve Japanese Language and IT Skills – Collaborative Creativity in Response to COVID-19”. We were enthusiastic to hear that we were eligible and would have won the fundings from the Japan Foundation. It was the highest recognition of how fundamental it is collaboration in such Covid time as ours. We were able to carry out a program where students, regardless of their Japanese language level, could combine their passion for Japanese Language and Culture to an innovative method of teaching Japanese language, due to the pandemic. 

Every person has the right and responsibility to talk

no matter our language ‘level’.

Leaving to technology what it is able to carry off by itself,

can give back to human beings the time to think, feel and create.

(Marcella Mariotti 2021)

I firmly believe “Collaborative Creativity 2021”, fits perfectly my Japanese Language Education NoLBrick vision, and I am grateful to the Japan Foundation and to all students who are taking active part in it!