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The coronavirus pandemic has instituted mandatory online education across Japan and many parts of the world. Using a semi-structured interview, we collected and analyzed students' reactions to online education across high-rank, mid-rank, and low-rank universities in Japan to determine learning outcomes among undergraduates with different pre-existing learning engagements. Our analysis revealed that online education proved effective on students with pre-existing learning engagement outside of class, which in compliance with prior research, only students at high-rank universities were found to possess. Therefore, we inferred that the implementation of online education has been successful at high-rank universities but not at others. This study refutes that the gap in learning outcomes between different university levels occurring as a result of the mandatory shift in the online education is a legitimate phenomenon. This study would serve as a new perspective and evidence for future discussions on equity in higher education.

Self-learning outside of class is an essential part of Japanese university education. With the drastic changes to university classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, self-learning became all the more important. In this study, we used surveys to investigate the changes in self-learning from 2019 to 2020, as reported by 5,861 third-year students at 15 universities from June to July 2020. We examined many fields of study and analyzed students' responses based on their learning habits in high school and university, employment, and class type (on-demand, live, and hybrid). The results showed that differences in self-learning habits were reinforced between 2019 and 2020. Moreover, the amount of self-learning varied greatly depending on the field of study and type of class. Self-learning was highest in the on-demand, live, and hybrid classes, respectively, among students in the humanities, social sciences, and health sciences etc. Our results suggest the need to consider effective class methods and class types for a given specialization to promote students' self-learning when remote education is required.

Implementing quality assurance of university students' learning outcomes is an important challenge. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, wherein many universities are implementing online education as "a new form of education," there is a pressing need to rethink class methods. This study clarifies the effect of class experience via online education on Japanese university students' learning outcomes amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The results indicate that students acquire knowledge and skills through online education in the same way as conventional face-to-face education, but regardless of the specialized field, the knowledge and skills acquired differ according to the form of online education employed. Our finding that appropriate learning outcomes are assured even for online education in the same way as face-to-face education is likely to be of major significance.

In the world today, there are 5 million international students studying abroad, including those at the universities in Japan. This research investigates the factors influencing the study abroad decision-making of Chinese international students, based on the results of two surveys and semi-structured interviews. It focuses on the universities' international environment and overseas publicity. The results were used to test the following hypothesis: "Chinese international students who decide to study in English-speaking countries/regions are more affected by universities' international environment and overseas publicity than those who decide to study in non-English-speaking countries/regions, such as Japan." Sample size emerged as a limitation of this study. Thus, future research should conduct analysis based not only on the "JASSO Study Abroad Fair," which provided the sample for this study, but also on a variety of study abroad fairs with larger sample sizes.

Internationalization in higher education in Japan is progressing, and it is desirable for international students to have a high degree of satisfaction with their experience in Japanese universities. With that in mind, this research focuses on the study of Japanese language and experiences of taking Japanese language classes before and during study abroad. In addition, this paper examines the different influences on Chinese and American international exchange students based on a questionnaire administered to students in Japanese universities between April and June 2016. A comparison between students who studied Japanese and took language classes before studying abroad and those who began only after coming to Japan shows significantly different levels of satisfaction with their university. Additionally, Chinese and American students experience different levels of satisfaction based on their experience with Japanese language. Chinese students' previous experience with learning Japanese did influence their satisfaction, but the magnitude of this influence was smaller than the influence of prior Japanese language experience on American students.

This paper investigates probabilistic failure envelopes of strip foundations on spatially variable soils with profiles of undrained shear strength, su, linearly increasing with depth using lower-bound random finite-element limit analysis. The spatially variable su is characterised by a non-stationary random field with linearly increasing mean and constant coefficient of variation (COV) with depth. The deterministic uniaxial capacities and failure envelopes are first derived to validate the numerical models and provide a reference for the subsequent probabilistic analysis. Results indicate that the random field parameters COVsu (the COV of su) and Δ (dimensionless autocorrelation distance) have a considerable effect on the probabilistic normalised uniaxial capacities, which alters the size of the probabilistic failure envelopes. However, an insignificant effect of COVsu and Δ on the shape of probabilistic failure envelopes is observed in the V–H, V–M and H–M loading spaces, such that failure envelopes for different soil variabilities can be simply scaled by the uniaxial capacities. In contrast to COVsu and Δ, the soil strength heterogeneity index κ = μkB/μsu0 has the lowest effect on the probabilistic normalised uniaxial capacity factors, but the highest effect on the shape of the probabilistic failure envelopes. A series of expressions is proposed to describe the shape of deterministic and probabilistic failure envelopes for strip foundations under combined vertical, horizontal and moment (V–H–M) loading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]