Introducing Change to Japanese Universities: Digital vs Paper Assignments

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic made an unprecidented impact on tertiary education in Japan, where many classes were suddenly moved to online, digital spaces. This sudden and major transition caused stress and confusion amongst both teachers and students, but this study hopes to explore the potential benefits that could be gained from continuing to use the new skills aquired by stakeholders during this turbulent time. While there is a wide range of contemporary literature on the pandemic's impact on instructional technology, this paper hopes to explore a very specific aspect of tertiary education, namely how projects were assigned, submitted, and graded both before and during the pandemic; it then goes on to examine the thoughts and experiences of both educators and students in the hope of discovering if preferences lie with traditional "paper" assignments or the "digital" methods adopted during the pandemic. The data was collected from existing studies, as well as quantitative data drawn from a small scale questionnaire of around 50 university students in Japan, as well as qualitative data from two key informants, who have decades of combined experience teaching at university level in Japan. The findings pointed to there being some noticeable benefits to continuing to use this digitial technology to assign/collect projects, for both teachers and students, however serious concerns were also raised, such as security and the importance of adequate training. This study aims to further the conversation on how instructuional technology is implimented, and how it can be used to its fullest potential in not only Japan, but around the world.