国際キャリア学科生は３年次から国際政治経済、地域研究、英語学・異文化コミュニケーション、経営・ビジネスの各専門分野のゼミ・クラスに分かれ、専門科目を重点的に学びます。
このうち、異文化コミュニケーション、社会学を中心に学ぶオキーフ・ゼミでは様々な社会問題について、米国のテレビ局での実務経験のあるグレゴリー・オキーフ准教授（米国出身）のもと、英語・日本語でのドキュメンタリー映像を作成しながら学びを深める授業を行っています。以下はオキーフ准教授によるゼミの紹介です。
O'Keefe Junior Seminar（３年次オキーフ・ゼミ）
This seminar class is unique in one specific way. The students work as a team to produce a short bilingual documentary on a topic of their choice over the full year course. This project based learning course starts out by giving students the basics in three of the main sociological perspectives. After understanding various frameworks, students will submit topics of interest which can be researched within a specific framework so they can communicate their ideas in a clear and concise way through the video they produce. The students choose the best topic from all the submitted ideas. After the final topic has been chosen, the students are then broken into three groups which all have specific roles. Groups become in charge of qualitative or quantitative research while others act as a support and online research group. Each group will act independently while periodically reporting their progress to the rest of the class and the instructor.
This whole process is a form of visual sociology. Visual sociology uses a visual format to explain complex topics. In this case, video recording and editing are the main tools utilized to explain the students chosen topic. Terms such as social fact, locus of control, and illusion of control will be applied. They will learn the importance of defining cultural situations by understanding “othering” which in turn will theoretically support an objective view of the topic through a process of critical thinking. Students will also be asked to perform various roles such as researcher, writer, narrator, translator to help complete the various tasks needed to complete the documentary.
The topic they choose needs to be a recent cultural or social trend. The research will extend beyond just internet searches but also generating interviews with relevant people as well as gathering information from an original questionnaire. It must be understood that even though this class breaks into three groups, they will be working as a whole to complete the same documentary. The groups also mix and change roles as the project progresses.
The video attached to this post shows students logging interviews for the documentary they are creating. They are choosing the parts of the interviews that best explain their topic. The topic for the 2022 seminar class is the socio-psychological effects of masking during the corona pandemic.
※The course contents will change if this class goes online. Students who choose any form of the lesson which they learn from online will be given a different set of writing assignments.
