Learning Strategy in Pandemic Era: Collaborative Research between Students of Binus University and Kanazawa Seiryo Women Junior College

. The COVID-19 pandemic hit the world at the end of 2019 caused a big change in human life. One of them is the education system. Social restrictions urged the education system carrying out various strategies in order that the learning process could run properly. This article will discuss the strategy taken by the Japanese Literature study program of Binus University to conduct research collaborations with Kanazawa Seiryou Woman's Junior College Japan during the pandemic by using some learning technologies. The applied approach is a qualitative through observation of student discussion activities and analysis of student final reports. The study reveals this activity succeeded in fostering positive impact in social, psychological and academic aspects. I also found that internet-based educational applications have proven to play a major role in connecting individuals from all over the world.


Introduction
End of 2019 can be considered as the beginning of the humanitarian tragedy that a tragedy that has a wide impact on the world.Starting by the discovery of the first COVID-19 case in China in August 2019 which continues to become an outbreak and then spreads to all countries around the world.No country has been spared from the COVID-19 outbreak.All sides of life have been affected.One of them is education.Teaching activities can no longer run normally through face-toface in the classroom.Students and teachers can only interact through distance learning.This is also happened in the lecture activities at the Japanese Literature study program at Binus University.Before the pandemic hit the world, regularly every year, Binus Japanese Literature students held face-to-face learning activities with several campuses in Japan.It is aimed that students have international experience associating with foreign students while increasing their confidence and skills in Japanese language and culture.However, since the pandemic hit, this activity has stopped completely.To keep this program running well, the study program initiates to collaborate with campuses in Japan through distance learning technology.One form of this activity is collaborative research with Kanazawa Seiryo Women Junior College.A higher education institution located in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.Collaborative research is part of collaborative learning that has been carried out in the Japanese Literature program long before Covid-19 pandemic.This activity, is a learning strategy through groups or teams and trusted to provide benefits in the form of synergies across disciplines, has the potential to solve larger and more complex problems and to improve research results due to its multidisciplinary nature (Qing and Li 2011;Turner and Baker 2020).In this collaborative research activity, I was assigned by the head of study program as one of the supervisors from Binus University along with others.For this activity, we involve ten Binus students.Kanazawa Seiryo Women Junior College was founded in 1979 and has five course options that focus on the field of business administration, general business, finance and accounting, distribution and sales, tourism management and sports management.This collaborative research activity is a part of the community development track in a series of enrichment activities at Binus Japanese literature study program and one of five tracks developed in the enrichment program at Binus.The other tracks are study abroad, internship, research and entrepreneurship.This community development activity is aimed to build social awareness of students by going directly into a community or society through social actions that provide mutual benefits.These social actions are generally in the form of teaching, such as being a teacher and conducting socialization or education obtained through research.However, there are also other forms of community development activities, such as helping to solve problems arising in a community.Students are directed to do some sort of jobs relating to content creator, socialization and presentation materials.The purpose of this program is that students not only have good technical skills but also good soft skills.The technical capabilities expected from this program are the ability to develop and implement the design thinking process; ability to develop, manage, and maintain their community relationships with community and other targeted partners; ability to apply their Japanese language and culture competencies into their community project development project; ability to translate and interpret their project materials for their community projects purpose (vice versa) and ability to solve the problems in community and social issues.In the work environment, the hard skills usually refer to technical procedures or practical tasks that are usually easy to observe, measure, and measure.The training of these skills for new graduates is relatively easy considering that they have already acquired the necessary knowledge in higher education (Shakir 2009).In addition to technical abilities, students are also expected to have good soft skills after joining this program.The soft skills expected are collaboration, digital and technology fluency, critical and creative thinking, applied management skills, growth mindset, initiative, adaptability.Shakir (2009) states that soft skills or what are commonly referred to as "people skills" are not easy to teach even though they are very much needed in the world of real work.These skills can usually be categorized into three main categories namely, personal attributes, interpersonal skills, and problem solving and decision-making.This activity also involved two communities in Indonesia and Japan.Each community is the English-Speaking Society of SMA Kanazawa Nishi Japan and SMP Lemuel Jakarta.EES (English Speaking Society) is a club located at Kanazawa Nishi High School, Japan.Having 23 members in 2021, EES is a club that focuses on improving English language skills by holding activities or activities that use English.Every year, EES regularly holds events such as dramas, debate competitions, speech competitions and camps.The Lemuel School started as a kindergarten established on 7 February 1970 under the name Lemuel Christian Kindergarten.The opening of this place of learning is the realization of the desire of the Church of Christ Petamburan (GKP) Council for the period 1968 -1973 intended to form a new church ministry in the field of education.On September 10, 1971, the founding body of the Lemuel School officially registered the name of the Bina Siswa Christian Education Foundation.Until now, Lemuel School has education levels from kindergarten to junior high school.This collaborative research activity also received support from a Japanese corporation called the Kaji group, a Japanese company that is the parent of two large companies, Kaji Machinery and Kaji Textile.PT Kaji Machinery Indonesia is a company engaged in the manufacture of textile machinery and its spare parts, spare-parts and supply of machinery.KAJI Group provides support in the form of access for students if they want to conduct data collection / interviews for employees who work at KAJI Group companies.This research collaborative carries five research themes, i.e., manufacturing industry, working culture, planting strategy, motorcycle industry, actions to achieve the SDGs.This activity takes place from October to January 2022.At the end of the program students have to send a number of reports related to log books, assignments, weekly reports, and enrichment final reports.

Objectives
This article will discuss the learning strategy carried out by the Japanese Literature study program Binus in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic through collaborative research activities between students of the Japanese literature study program Binus and students of Kanazawa Seiryo Women's College in Japan.This study also will explore the impact of this activity to the students from several perspectives such as social, psychological and academic aspects.

Collaborative research
Austin, Welch and Leonard as quoted by Laal & Ghodsi (2012) state that in the 21st century there is a trend towards collaboration in which individuals are increasingly thinking and working together in society.This leads to a transition from individual effort to group work, and from self-reliance to community.Collaborative research is a method of instruction in which individuals work with one another to achieve a common goal.They are responsible for their own learning as well as for the learning of others, and one person's success drives others to be successful (Laal 2013; Le et al. 2018).This scientific collaboration providing the benefits of promoting cross-disciplinary synergies, has the potential to solve larger and more complex problems, and to increase the impact of research results due to its multidisciplinary nature (Turner and Baker 2020).Various benefits resulting from the use of information technology in collaborative learning that includes social, psychological and academic benefits.The social benefits are helping to develop a social support system for students; leads to building an understanding of diversity among students and staff; build a positive atmosphere for cooperative models & practices and develop a learning community.The psychological benefit is that student-centred instruction increases student self-esteem; cooperation reduces anxiety, and develops positive attitudes towards teachers.Academic benefits are promoting critical thinking skills, involving students actively in the learning process, improving grade results, modeling appropriate student problem solving techniques while the great lectures can be personalized and are very helpful in motivating students in a particular curriculum (Laal and Ghodsi 2012).Bao and Swain as quoted by Scotland (2022) explain that the main portion of teaching communicative language communication in foreign language classes is aimed at learner interaction.When these foreign language learners work collaboratively, there is an expectation that they will talk to each other about the language to complete the task.This interaction has been referred to as collaborative dialogue.This activity refers to a dialogue in which the speakers engage together in problem solving and knowledge building.

Digital Learning
In the midst of today's rapid technological developments, various learning applications are increasingly recognized by the wider community.Internet-based educational applications allow individuals who live geographically far apart to share information and ideas.
Learning technology also provides a constructivist learning environment, collaborative learning and independent learning.Individuals can create projects in their respective fields and they can work together (Keser and Özdamli 2012).Web-based educational technology refers to the use of computer networks that provide resources and a multimedia learning environment.In practice, the members are divided into many groups.Team members via the internet or multimedia technology provide related resources for learning (Qing and Li 2011).The Covid-19 pandemic hit the world at the beginning of 2020 has rapidly changed the structure of people's lives, including Indonesia.The world of education is forced to replace face-to-face learning with online learning (Giatman et al. 2020).The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented changes in education systems around the world.Apart from the economic and social impacts, there is a dilemma of acceptance of the new "e-learning" educational system by students in educational institutions (Al-Okaily et al. 2020).Adaptive learning, supported by Communication & Information Technology, is an important research area for education systems to improve student outcomes (Gomede et al. 2021).Digital technology as an elearning application is also called instructional technology (Rahayu et al. 2022).The use of e-learning among users is a challenge for many universities in all countries.In addition, the challenges of implementing elearning systems in developing countries are still rare due to problems with access to the technology (Salahshouri et al. 2022).Nevertheless, advances in information technology have been shown to contribute to increasing employee creativity and ideas (Oldham and Da Silva 2015).User adaptation to e-learning with various skill levels is important (Boussakssou et al. 2020).

Methods
This research was designed by qualitative approach through observation of students' activities.This research also carried out through analysing and interpretation of final project reports of Japanese Literature students participating in the community development program for the odd academic year 2021-2022 as well as other related library sources.

Data Collection
Data collection in this study was carried out through a study of the final reports of students participating in the community development program for the odd semester of academic year 2021-2022 as well as other literature sources related to the problem.

Results & Discussion
The implementation of this collaborative research activity started from October 2021 until February 2022.Students from both sides were divided into five groups.Each group is consisted of two Japanese Literature students from Binus University and one student from Kanazawa Seiryo Women Junior College.The activity begins with a discussion to determine and formulate research themes, research objects, search for relevant literature and other preparations related to survey activities in two places, namely Kanazawa Nishi High School and Lemuel Middle School.At this stage, students from both sides are required not only to have the ability to speak the language and know the culture of the partner but also to have the ability to build and implement a design mindset related to the program held and align it with the mindset of the partners and communities they will meet.This process was tough at first.This is understandable due to language and cultural differences.But gradually, by the supervisors' assistance of both parties who are always present at every meeting, this difference is getting smaller.In this series of research, students regularly hold discussions in their respective groups as well as large group discussions guided by supervisors from each university.In this large group discussion, each group explained the progress and problems faced by each group.The interaction process through regular discussions makes internal group problems to be minimized while at the same time fostering new soft skills among students related to collaboration, adaptation, critical and creative thinking skills.Interaction with students in Japan who have a disciplined, punctual, critical and detailed work culture also encourages changes in the mindset and learning styles of Binus Japanese Literature students.The opportunity for discussion is also a forum for Binus Literature students to actively practice foreign language learning strategies and foster collaborative dialogue between the two educational institutions (Scotland 2022).All activities involving institutions in both countries can be established due to the use of distance learning technology, namely Zoom application.In every meeting, the supervisors of the two campuses and students discuss through the zoom application and then conduct small group discussions in a virtual room or breakout room.The existence of learning technology is also used by students in distributing questionnaires to respondents and providing feedback on respondents' answers.The entire process of distributing this questionnaire was carried out using a google form.Internet-based educational applications have proven to play a major role in connecting individuals, who are geographically far apart, share information and ideas.Learning technology also provides a constructivist learning environment, collaborative learning and independent learning.Individuals can create projects in their respective fields and they can work together (Keser and Özdamli 2012).Slick collaboration with the help of sophisticated learning technology has an impact on the success of this research collaboration through research results which are then disseminated in the community.From the results of group discussions for some time, finally each group succeeded in making several presentation slides.One of them is as follows:

Fig. 1. Group presentation on car socialization
The picture above shows the topic of discussion regarding the presence of cars in the two countries.In formulating this research, students with six member each collected data in the form of a survey of Kaji Machinery companies and students in Indonesia and Japan.The topics asked varied, such as predictions of motorized vehicles in Japan and Indonesia in the future, the efforts made by automotive companies and the interest of students living in rural and urban areas towards motorized vehicles.and socialization of electric car procurement.The picture above is an example of a student presentation.This time they took the theme of the comparison of driving styles in Japan and Indonesia, including the tendency of people to choose a car or motorbike.After thorough preparations were made around November-December, in January 2022, a socialization program was carried out to the target schools, namely Lemuel Middle School and Nishi Kanazawa High School.The socialization process at Nishi Kanazawa High School was carried out using Japanese and English.The use of Japanese and English in this presentation encourages the confidence of Binus Japanese Literature students to speak in public as well as preparing all forms of questions that arise related to the theme presented.In this presentation and discussion activity, collaboration between students at the two institutions occurred in the division of tasks in the field.They are assigned to be MCs, presenters and other supporting tasks.During its implementation, sometimes a stiff atmosphere arises among the participants.For this reason, the students prepared several games to break the ice between the participants.The students delivered their presentations in three languages, namely Japanese, English and Indonesian.Foreign language practice activities in the formal environment can be an effort to realize technical skills in the form of the ability to apply their Japanese language and culture competencies into their community project development project; ability to translate and interpret their project materials for their community project's purpose There was high enthusiasm from the participants and students towards this program.This enthusiasm occurs because they can interact with students from campuses in other countries.This shows that the collaborative research program that was held succeeded in fostering positive social attitudes, namely the establishment of a uniform understanding among students, building a positive atmosphere for cooperative models and practices, and developing a learning community.Psychologically, learning patterns that are centered on student collaboration in groups also increase students' self-esteem and reduce anxiety.Furthermore, in terms of academic benefits, the collaborative model supports critical thinking skills and involves students actively in the learning process (Laal and Ghodsi 2012).In this presentation session, students were divided into virtual rooms (breakout rooms) to get explanations and conduct discussions on the topics of each group of students.After that, several students were randomly selected to briefly present the results of the discussion.From the joint activities of the working group and the two selected communities, it can be concluded that a collective learning strategy has been formed which refers to efforts to realize technical abilities in the form of the ability to develop and implement the design thinking process; ability to develop, manage, and maintain their community relationships with community and others targeted partners and ability to solve the problems in community and social issues.

Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world of education to develop new learning strategies to survive.One of them is the use of various learning technologies.The Japanese Literature study program Binus also applies this learning strategy through a collaborative research program with one of the colleges in Japan.From the results of the analysis carried out, it can be concluded that through this program students have the opportunity to improve their language skills and get to know the culture of their work partners, build and implement a mindset design related to the program to be held and align it with the mindset of partners and the communities they will meet.The collaborative research program succeeded in fostering a positive social attitude, establishment of mutual understanding among students, building a positive atmosphere for collaborative models and practices, and developing a learning community.Psychologically, learning patterns focusing on student collaboration in groups also increase students' selfesteem and reduce anxiety.Furthermore, in terms of academic benefits, it improves critical thinking skills and involve students actively in the learning process.From these joint activities, it can be concluded that collective learning strategy has formed the ability of students to develop and implement the design thinking process; manage and maintain their community relationships with community and others targeted partners and solve problems in community and social issues as well as the emergence of new soft skills in the form of collaboration, adaptation, critical and creative thinking skills.From this activity it can also be concluded that internet-based educational applications have proven to play a major role in connecting individuals, who are geographically far apart, share information and ideas.In the future, this activity can be expanded in various aspects such as language and cultural learning.It's very important because interaction with foreign students, in addition to adding insight, can also increase the selfconfidence of our students.

Fig. 4 .
Fig. 4. Presentation in front of Lemuel Junior High School's Students