Creating a School-Wide Digital Teaching and Learning Systems and the Practice of Supporting First-Year Students with Learning Online at Osaka University

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce school-wide teaching and learning support practices by using digital learning tools for students and faculties during the COVID-19 pandemic. Right after the COVID-19 pandemic affected the higher-education in Japan, Osaka University built a Teaching Class Support and Response Team during the new semester to develop school-wide online teaching and learning supports due to the campus closure. The team offers multi-faceted support tools such as LMS help desk, orientation videos via YouTube channel for first-year students, and teaching online guidelines during the semester. Through our practices, we find the significant issue of teaching at the university during the COVID-19 era. The issue is: how we conduct classes to combine face-to-face and learning online in the same semester. To resolve this issue, we believe that universities need to develop an organizational comprehensive support system for teaching and learning. We also expect that scholars would share their expertise, idea, and practices of teaching under practices the COVID-19 pandemic by using an academic society.