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A personal history: 21. Open and distance learning in Japan and South Korea

July 16, 2024

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Enjoying summer

I hope you are all having a well-earned break. Here in Vancouver we are enjoying a wonderful summer. I hope you are finding similar ‘Goldilocks’ weather: not too hot, not too cold, not too dry (although there is still time for all this and more). However, because of the summer I have been spending less time in my office writing so there has been a bit of a break in my blog posts.

I am writing an autobiography, mainly for my family, but it does cover some key moments in the development of open and online learning. I thought I would share these as there seems to be a growing interest in the history of educational technology.

Note that these posts are NOT meant to be deeply researched historical accounts, but how I saw and encountered developments in my personal life. If you were around at the time of these developments and would like to offer comments or a different view, please use the comment box at the end of each post. (There is already a conversation track on my LinkedIn site and on X). A full list of the posts to date will be found toward the end of this post.

The fraternity of educational technology and instructional design

Fraternity: the state or feeling of friendship and mutual support within a group.

I have been incredibly fortunate to be part of the fraternity of those working worldwide in educational technology or course design. This has meant I have made good friends and colleagues around the world, people who share similar values about education and who have a unique shared experience of working in academia. The very nature of such work demands good social skills, especially in relating to academics who are often at least initially suspicious about or resistant to the ideas being touted by educational technologists or instructional designers. Such colleagues usually have an open-ness to new ideas, and a common understanding of their roles and skills. This fraternity has been an incredibly important part of my life.

This meant during my career that whenever I travelled (and I travelled a lot) there would be either familiar friends or new friends to be made. Therefore although invitations to speak at conferences or run seminars or programs often came from those I already knew, they also came too from complete strangers who knew about me, either through my writing or through having attended one of my keynotes or seminars.

Japan and Korea

A short visit to Japan: has anything changed in 30 years?

One of the surprise invitations came in 1995 from the National Institute of Multimedia Education in Chiba, Japan. Chiba is about 90 minutes by train from downtown Tokyo. I wasn’t sure why they had invited me as I knew no-one there but I was asked to give a keynote to their staff and invited guests at their headquarters in Chiba.

I was usually very comfortable travelling in foreign countries that I had never before visited, but Japan was an exception. I could not speak nor read any Japanese, and in 1995 not many Japanese spoke English, so just getting around was difficult, involving a lot of gesticulating and pointing to places on maps. Even at NIME I found communicating with my colleagues unusually difficult, partly because of the language, but also the culture was very different. Although the Japanese I met were very friendly and polite, they were much more formal than most colleagues in foreign countries, and even the staff at NIME spoke little English, at least at that time.

Also there was a really heavy emphasis on technology, particularly new or leading edge technology. Because my lecture was being relayed simultaneously across several sites, it consequently took about half a dozen technicians nearly an hour to set up my Powerpoint presentation, because none of the equipment was standard or compatible with my software and Macintosh laptop computer, but, as nearly always, the technicians made it work

Tracking emerging technologies of course was the job of NIME, but their emphasis, at least in 1995, was entirely technological. The teaching had to fit the technology. The technology that NIME was demonstrating – at that time mainly satellite TV, cable television and especially video-conferencing – was mostly used for relaying lectures. Following my keynote (which was simultaneously translated into Japanese), I felt from the questions at the end that the main interest at NIME was not on the teaching and learning implications of using different technologies, but which technology was technically better for delivering lectures.

Much has changed in Japan in the last 30 years, but I was still surprised to read in the most recent issue of Vol. 16, No.2 of the Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education (JCIHE) in a paper by Tookaa et al. (2024) that:

Although the Japanese government in 2018 indicated ‘the digitalization of higher education as an important policy issue for the realization of “Society 5.0….. digitalization is still in its infancy, and lifelong learning itself being peripheral to Japanese universities….there are also many challenges to be faced’.

Despite the government’s wishes and the impact of Covid-19 in moving many Japanese professors to teach online for the first time, in Japan the use of online learning is still limited. In a 2017 survey, the use of document creation software such as PowerPoint was expanding both in and out of the class, whereas the use of LMS and file-sharing tools to support student learning was not progressing and was low… The reasons for the lack of promotion of the use of LMS and file-sharing tools are the preference for traditional paper-based education (Kano & Gobel, 2014) as well as the mismatch with their classes and the technological anxiety felt by faculty members regarding LMS use (Ishikawa & Hara, 2019). In addition, the lack of computer literacy among faculty members has also been indicated as a challenge (Nishii. (Ed.), 2020).

Although in recent times the government has allowed a higher proportion of classes to be online, government still strictly regulates accreditation based on time spent in-class, and according to this and other papers on the topic most Japanese professors still believe the only valid method of university teaching is orally in lecture theatres. Now one could say this about most countries, including Canada, but in Japan the strong culture, traditions of teaching and learning, and regulations limiting online learning make these barriers higher than in many other countries.

Japan has remained an enigma for me, leaving me with a feeling that I am missing something really important. Certainly a three-day working visit was insufficient to really understand and appreciate the unique Japanese culture. I’d like to hear from others more familiar with the Japanese system, especially regarding university teaching today.

South Korea: online learning is alive and well

When colleagues at the Korean National Open University (KNOU) heard I was coming to Japan in 1995, they invited me to continue on to Seoul. It was a short stay, just one overnight stop, followed by a keynote next day. My flight back to Canada was late the same night. Following the keynote, I was invited to join two of the staff of the KNOU (all women) for dinner at a restaurant, from where I would go direct to the airport. At the end of a delightful dinner (the women all spoke excellent English), I was surprised to see one of them push a large, plain brown paper carrier bag under the table to me.

‘As you bought your own ticket and paid for your hotel yourself, this is for your travel expenses to Korea. It is 3 million won.’

I peered into the bag which was almost full of Korean money.

‘You can change this into Canadian dollars when you get to the airport. Please sign this receipt. Also, because of the traffic, we will take you to a nearby subway station and you can get a direct subway train to the airport.’ I was a bit worried, as there were only a couple of hours before my plane to Vancouver was due to leave.

‘No, no, you will have plenty of time’, they said

I had no idea how many won there were to a Canadian dollar, but it seemed like a huge amount of money. The women graciously escorted me to the subway, bought my ticket, and said goodbye. I then sat on a packed commuter train with my small carry-on bag with my computer on my lap and the brown carrier bag between my knees, terrified someone would rob me, but no-one seemed interested.

When I got to the airport I found a currency exchange counter. There was a short queue. When I got to the counter, I said:

‘Do you speak English?’

‘Yes, some.’

I held up the carrier bag.

‘Can you change this to Canadian dollars?’, I said, pushing the bag across the counter.

The man behind the counter didn’t bat an eyelid. He scooped up the money and fed it into an automatic counting machine. In less than two minutes, he paid out just over $3,000 in Canadian currency. It looked very small in comparison. And I made the flight in plenty of time.

I have made several more trips to Seoul since to give presentations and to talk to staff, not just at KNOU but also at the Seoul National University and the Ewha Women’s University. On one trip I was taken to the Korean Demilitarised Zone, which is only 30 kilometres north of Seoul, and peered over the wall into North Korea.

As elsewhere, the impact of Covid-19 on teaching and learning has been significant in South Korea. Lee and Lee (2024) recently reported that one of the biggest achievements of the fast and expanded digitization of teaching and learning is the increased knowledge and practice to make the teaching and learning in HE more effective for learners. New ‘learner-centered’ pedagogical models have actively been explored during the pandemic with the utilization of digital teaching and learning.

I was surprised at the big difference between South Korea and Japan. Probably because English was never a barrier on my visits to South Korea, I found South Korea much more open and westernised. It was also much more committed to open and distance learning, with many public and private universities offering whole degree programs at a distance, besides the KNOU. In particular, women in Korea, such as Insung Jung, were, and are, very active in online and distance learning, and are globally recognised experts in open and distance learning.

However, I would really need to spend more time in Korea and Japan particularly to feel comfortable with this comparison. I’m wondering if others have had similar or different experiences (please use the comment box at the end of this post).

References

Ishikawa, K. & Hara, S. (2019). The relationship between the attitude and usage for LMS (Learning Management System). Yamanashi Gakuin University journal of management information science (Keieijohogaku ronsyu), 25, 41–49.

Kano, M. & Gobel, P. (2014). Japanese teachers’ use of technology at Kyoto Sangyo university. Forum of Higher Education Research, 4, 57–69.

Lee, H. and Lee, R. (2024) Transformation of Korean Higher Education in the Digital Era: Achievements and Challenges Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education Vol. 16. No.2

Nishii, Y. (Ed.). (2020). Private universities in the COVID-19 pandemic. The Research Institute for Independent Higher Education. https://www.shidaikyo.or.jp/riihe/book/5141cdec074a1afe0b8a693c935936f95b5e92ed.pdf

Tatsuya Tookaa, Naoyoshi Uchidab, Keigo Takenagaa, Kazuaki Maruyamaa, and Maki Katoa (2024) Digitalization of Higher Education in Japan: Challenges and Reflections for Education Reform Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education Vol. 16. No.2