Attendance Policy
Please make certain that you know the dates that the semester begins and ends at the EAS before you book your tickets. It is important to ensure that your tickets allow you to be in attendance for the full semester. Because our program involves immersion in the Japanese culture, the EAS requires that students be in attendance from the first day until the final day of the semester in order to receive full credit. Any requests for permission to arrive subsequent to the beginning of the EAS semester or to leave prior to the end will be decided on a case by case basis and must be made before the start of the semester.

Orientation Program
Our orientation program includes a week of daily meetings with the faculty and staff to introduce the academic program, life in Kyoto, dorm life and center usage. During this week students will be interviewed to determine their Japanese language ability by teachers of our Japanese language program. In addition, students will spend most afternoons of the orientation week finding their way around Kyoto on our “Unguided Tour.” This tour, which is outlined in the EAS handbook that students receive upon arrival, is divided into four routes and 42 sites which will bring students to the major sections of the city via Kyoto’s well developed public transportation system. Routes involve stops in economically priced Japanese restaurants, coffeehouses and cafes, temples, the handicraft center, museums, the Imperial Palace, a castle, a martial arts center and other Kyoto hot spots. Each route is selected to help students acclimate to life in Kyoto, the first tour taking students to key spots in the neighborhood. Students will be provided with the appropriate bus and train passes to cover all transportation costs.

In addition, we provide our students with a detailed orientation entitled “How to Live Cheaply in Kyoto.” Contrary to the popular belief that it is impossible to live on a modest income in Japan, our students find that the room and board stipend provides more than enough money for them to live if they follow some simple guidelines which they learn during this orientation.

Experiential Learning:
How We Plan, Structure, Document and Evaluate
Our approach to experiential learning is given form and content in five major ways:

• Through a Learning Plan formulated jointly by the student and his or her faculty advisor;

• Through regular advising sessions, in which a student’s ongoing work is reviewed and suggestions are made for proceeding;

• Through presentations given before the learning community in which students reflect on, organize and orally present their study as a means of clarifying their learning and giving others the opportunity to benefit from what each student has learned;

• Through writing a Portfolio of Learning in which learning is documented, analyzed, presented and reflected upon;

• Through faculty evaluation of the Portfolio, the basis upon which students receive feedback on their work and upon which credit is granted.

Learning Plans
At the beginning of each semester, every student prepares a learning plan to outline the course of study he or she intends to pursue. Preliminary planning for the semester is essential to the educational process. As students determine their own courses of study in conjunction with their faculty advisors, it is essential to prepare a plan, which outlines not only a course of study but also goals and learning objectives for the semester. Learning plans help students to conceptualize, define, organize, plan, carry out, analyze and document their learning experiences. In addition to helping the student plan the semester, the learning plan also functions as a sort of contract between the student and his or her advisor. The credits and evaluations the student receives at the end of the semester are based upon how well the student has carried out the agreed upon learning activities.

Presentations
As Friends World students pursue many of their studies independently, there is obviously a broad range of subjects being studied. Presentations of students’ work give the entire learning community the chance to benefit from the learning of all the students as well as the opportunity to learn how to organize material into a cogent, interesting format. Work is presented both mid-semester and at semester’s end, in an informal “ingathering” whereby students introduce their studies. Presentations can take the form of a short talk, a demonstration, a video that a student has made, a slide show or any form that the student feels can best demonstrate his or her learning. Students are usually allotted twenty minutes each for their presentations, plus a question and answer period. Early in the semester, a workshop will be held to give students the necessary background to prepare and make a presentation.

Self-Evaluations
Students are asked to evaluate their learning at both mid- semester and at semester’s end. The purpose is to allow students a chance to step back and reflect on their own progress, both academic and personal.

Self-evaluations are divided into two categories; a course- based evaluation and a more general and personal evaluation. The sole purpose of both of these evaluations is to give the student the opportunity to reflect upon and trace his or her progress during the semester.

Final Evaluations
Students are expected to submit and revise their work throughout the semester. At the culmination of each semester, students submit the final draft of the Portfolios of Learning to their academic advisors, who will evaluate the learning documented and assign credit. As the process of learning is as essential as the content of the learning, students who submit work to their advisors for the first time in the final Portfolio run a very serious risk of not being awarded full credit for their work. Grades will not be awarded to a student unless specifically requested by a Visiting Student in the Visiting Student Agreement form during the enrollment process, for credit at a visiting student’s home university; instead, students receive a detailed narrative evaluation.