Kansai University is pleased to announce the opening of the renewed virtual MI-Room. MI-Room stands for Multilingual Immersion Room. Similar to the physical space on campus, the virtual version of MI-Room is a global communication space where students can do language and cultural exchange, and join various sessions organized by students themselves.

It is hosted in Ovice, a 2D metaverse platform that allows students to create avatars and converse through chat, audio and video calls. Student-led language and culture exchange sessions are held every Tuesdays (Japanese language exchange) and Thursdays (English language exchange) from 15:00-17:00 Japan Standard Time. Additionally, students are free to use the space outside of session hours to continue their exchanges and use it for any other language exchange. The space can also be used by incoming and past exchange students to connect with their KU peers. 

With this virtual space, Kansai University hopes to give students more opportunities to learn about other cultures and to make new friends, says Yuka Katayama, one of the MI-Room coordinators: 

"The Virtual Mi-Room opened for the 2023 Spring semester in May. The Virtual Mi-Room is a space where students from all over the world can interact with each other online. It has three session rooms: Japanese, English, and Other. In the Japanese and English rooms, Virtual Global Teaching Assistants (V-GTA) from Kansai University lead the conversation. If students want to speak any other languages, they can feel free to go to the Other room. We believe that this virtual space can let students in different parts of the world interact with each other more easily, and hope that they get to have more opportunities to learn other cultures and languages."

 

How to join the MI-Room

The virtual MI-room is opened 24/7 and is open to all KU students and students from KU/IIGE partner universities. The room is open until June 29th (thursday) and can be accessed (free of charge) here: https://kansaiunivdx2.ovice.in/