Our 16^th Discussion Café, an ongoing collaboration between TMDU and Waseda University, was held on Saturday, July 3^rd. The event brought together about 40 students with diverse backgrounds from both universities via Zoom!

This year, due to the outbreak of the new coronavirus, it was decided to continue the online format of the Discussion Café to prevent infection through face-to-face contact. The three newly recruited task force members had a preliminary meeting with the Waseda University staff and deepened exchanges to ensure the smooth running of the event.

The theme of this year's event was "The Future of Learning". Since last April, many university students have been forced to take online classes. During this time of classes in very different styles than before such as online classes, hybrid classes, and other formats, many students took the time as an opportunity to meet a wider world online and acquire skills and knowledge. In this Discussion Café, the first half was mainly spent reflecting on the changes in students’ lives over the past year and sharing these with the group members. In the second half, based on these experiences, they had a broad discussion about what kind of learning format would suit them and how they would spend their time at university in the future. The active participation of students from both schools made for a very lively and meaningful discussion.

Discussion Café is a fantastic opportunity to practice English communication skills as well as to network with students from a wide variety of majors, career goals and cultural backgrounds. This event would not have been possible without the hard work of Waseda University’s ICC staff, and the assistance of TMDU’s Task Force, who all worked very hard to prepare for this event!

The next Discussion Café will be held on Saturday December 11, 2021. We hope to see you all then!