Promoting Internationalization in Higher Education: The Prospects and Challenges of Implementing Virtual Japanese Language Courses

Internationalization in higher education brings together people from different socio-cultural backgrounds, creating not only opportunities for cooperation but also occasions for conflict. This paper addresses how universities may better support outbound undergraduate students in pre-empting conflict that could arise from miscommunication, through assisting them in enhancing their proficiency in the host country’s official language prior to departure from their home jurisdiction. Focused on students in Hong Kong who choose Japan as their outbound destination, the paper investigates the effectiveness of a new virtual Japanese language course developed by researchers at City University of Hong Kong and administered to students prior to leaving Hong Kong. The course consists of 12 chapters that cover hiragana, katakana, and a variety of everyday topics, scenarios, and expressions that students are likely to encounter in Japan. The course’s effectiveness is tested through experiments that leverage a staggered-rollout design and randomly assign subjects to a 20-day or 10-day period of self-paced learning prior to departure. Longitudinal variation in subjects’ proficiency is tracked through their completion of multiple iterations of the same quiz with randomized question-and-choice order albeit without the provision of correct answers. Results from the pilot experiment indicate that subjects’ use of this virtual course yielded a significant aggregate improvement despite their high level of baseline proficiency, and the mean substantive effect was 3.2 additional correct answers out of 40 questions. However, a longer learning period was not associated with a greater degree of improvement: subjects in the 10-day group improved more than those in the 20-day group. These findings suggest that while virtual courses can be effective in enabling outbound students to enhance their language proficiency, the effectiveness of such support may be higher when offered in a more concentrated form due to challenges associated with learners’ low levels of intrinsic motivation and time constraints. Taken together, this paper elucidates the prospects and challenges of implementing virtual courses to accompany internationalization activities spearheaded by universities in Hong Kong and around the world.
© The University of Hong Kong, School of Professional and Continuing Education / Society of Japanese Language Education Hong Kong, 2025