JD Pilot Program Report

Momoko Kawaguchi, 2nd year student at the Department of Environmental Management and Sustainability, Faculty of Environmental Studies

During my six weeks in Australia, I learned a lot and broadened my perspective. I encountered people and cultures that I did not know about when I was in Japan, and I had the opportunity to think about what it would be like to study at a university or graduate school.It was a lot of hard work, but my experience in Australia helped me grow in many ways. I also took part in a variety of extracurricular activities, but the learning and experiences offered by the Program can are divided into three main parts. These are the SOAR session, the tour at the Joondalup Campus, and six weeks of classes.

In the SOAR session, students learned about time management methods, data analysis using apps, and the flow of research.What particularly made an impression on me were the time management methods and the face-to-face SOAR session. In the former, I learned that (1) setting goals, (2) planning, (3) monitoring, and (4) making corrections are the main pillars of time management, and I learned how important these actions are in our lives. In particular, the Eisenhower Matrix, which organizes tasks by urgency and importance, was something I’d worked on once before, but had a hard time with, so I wanted to start again and manage tasks in a manner that allows me to understand the priorities at a glance. In the latter, two advisors lectured three of us students, and after the explanations, we discussed how the content of this session could be used for our future research in university and graduate school. In this session, students learned how to collect data when working on research, how to define and identify relevant factors in research, and how to get support from their professors and support centers. It was something I will be able to use when I go into the lab and work on my research.My studies are in the environmental field, and as a result of the talk following the session, I recognized the need to look at ethical issues and stakeholders. The data analysis session was filled with data and math jargon, so all I could do was do my best to keep up.In the final SOAR session, we learned about Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient in the first half, and about regression analysis in the second half.We understand how much influence factors related to outcomes have, and how to reveal causal relationships through functions. I think these statistical methods will be useful in conducting research and collecting data.

The second of my key experiences, the tour of the Joondalup Campus, included a visit to laboratories, a presentation about ECU’s graduate school, a campus tour, and a visit to a cybersecurity class and facility.During the laboratory visit, we visited a laboratory that conducts research on identifying chronic diseases in children’s urine and a laboratory that studies differences in the growth rate of seaweed due to changes in its environment.The former was particularly interesting because I had never heard of the possibility of detecting chronic diseases in human urine rather than blood.In particular, in the second session on the topic of cybersecurity, I was able to observe a little bit of the class, and it was very fascinating because the curriculum was practical and the facilities were good.In addition, I found the campus very large compared to Mount Lawley Campus, and the facilities, events, and research environment for students were comprehensive and appealing.

As for the third of my key experiences, through the six-week course at AE4, I gained the ability to write essays in English, organize information in English, and distinguish important information from the rest when listening in English.The difference from studying in Japan is that you learn English in English, and in addition to improving our English skills, we learned about critical thinking.When I was in Japan, I studied using Japanese grammar books and vocabulary books with meanings written in Japanese, but studying completely in English was very informative because I could learn details such as whether expressions were formal or casual from native teachers. As for the latter, critical thinking, I learned this practice through discussions in class. Critical thinking is about ascertaining the true nature of an idea and thinking about whether it is truly correct.In the class discussions, I considered the background and merits and demerits of each idea.Also, most of my classmates were students from different countries, so the countries where they grew up and the environments they were in were completely different, and every opinion was interesting.When I take classes in Japan, I feel that there is a culture in which students feel they must accept what the teachers say as fact, from elementary school to university.However, the class at ECU was not like that, and I spent a lot of time trying to bring objectivity to my ideas and identifying the true nature of my ideas through discussion.As I read in the mock assessment, critical thinking is a mainstream method of education across Australia. I found it fascinating how in the Australian education system, students take their own ideas, think about them objectively, and share them with others, and I would love to study here again if I had the chance. I also learned the basics of writing English papers in college and graduate school, including how to conduct research and cite literature.In Japanese, I had never learned how to cite literature, identify reliable information, and translate that information and literature into my own words, but it was something I will certainly be able to use when writing my graduation thesis or working on report assignments for lectures. This class was very helpful for me because I have sometimes taken information from references without paraphrasing.Paraphrasing in English is a little difficult, but I would like to expand the vocabulary and phrases I know.

Among the five participants, I think I was the least able to speak English at first. In the beginning, I didn’t feel confident because I couldn’t help comparing my English competency with others. Now, however, I feel that my English skills have improved through classes and interactions with my classmates and host mother. I had never worked on a summary of an article or a listening essay before, so the returned homework was initially filled with many corrections. But my classmates and I advised each other on where and how to correct mistakes, and in doing so, I learned not to repeat the same mistakes, and by comparing example summaries with my own, I acquired the ability to write in the correct forms. In the seminars, I gathered with my group members after school to exchange ideas and prepare together.In the end, I was very happy to receive a 90% grade in the actual reading assessment and presentation at the seminar.At the beginning, I sometimes felt dejected because there were things that I was not good at and because I compared myself with others, but the experience of overcoming these weaknesses through my own continuous efforts was very meaningful and important to me.Now, I am confident that this experience will help me even when I run into obstacles in the future.

Going to graduate school, let alone studying at a graduate school abroad, was a very high hurdle for me, and I hardly even thought about it.However, by participating in the JD pilot program, going to graduate school became an option after graduation.There are many reasons for this, but one of the most important is the classmates I studied with for five weeks. In Japan, it is considered very challenging for women to study or reenroll in university or graduate school after getting married and having children.But most of my classmates in Perth were over 30, and mothers with children were learning with them as a matter of course. I was impressed by classmates who had clear dreams for their future and what they wanted to study in graduate school, such as a student studying hospitality to become a hotel or restaurant manager, a student studying cybersecurity to work with technology, and a student who moved to Perth with his family to expand his knowledge and provide a higher education for his children.My friends and I only vaguely think about the future, and few people have a clear vision of what they want to do in the future or what kind of career they want to pursue.However, these wonderful interactions with my classmates there made me think about the future.They made me want to study English more and interact with and study with people from different backgrounds in other countries. Over the past six weeks in Perth, I have expanded my options and vision for the future, made new wonderful friends, and felt positive about my English studies and future.After returning to Japan, I have continued to study English.Despite the difficulties, I am truly happy to have participated in the Program.