At present, the COVID-19 epidemic is spreading rapidly around the world, which has exerted a huge impact on the teaching of worldwide universities. According to the data released on March 4th, 2020, 22 countries across 3 continents have announced or implemented school suspensions, affecting 290.5 million students, up to an unprecedented scale and speed.
In this situation, the successful experience of online teaching in China's higher education has attracted worldwide attention. On March 17th, 2020, the international roundtable conference themed "Higher Education Under Epidemic: Digital Technologies as a Remedy?" was successfully held. Prof. Froumin, Director of the Institute of Education at the “Higher School of Economics” (HSE) which is a national research university in Russia, presided over the conference attended by more than 200 higher education experts, the representatives from China, Russia, the United States and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The MOE Research Center for Online Education was invited to introduce the online teaching experience of China’s higher education to the participant experts, focusing on that of KUST’s. Most teachers and students at KUST use the 'Rain Classroom' for online teaching and learning. There were over 185,000 classroom interactions including in-class quizzes, real-time “bullet screen” comments, in-class task submissions and “bonus red envelopes” from teachers, which were recorded during the first week of online teaching, with an average of more than 150 classroom interactions per class. The report on the online teaching quality and the pictures of the new-term teaching inspection of KUST with the help of the “Rain Classroom” were also presented.
KUST has carefully organized and prepared for its online teaching by adhering to the principles of the important instructions and speeches about the prevention and control of pandemic from President Xi Jinping and issued"KUST’s Implementation Plan for Undergraduate Teaching Arrangement During the Prevention and Control of COVID-19",“Notice on Undergraduate Teaching Through Informatization During the Prevention and Control of COVID-19”and“Notice on Undergraduate Online Learning During the Prevention and Control of COVID-19”.
To guarantee the quality of online teaching, KUST also issued“Notice on Guaranteeing the Teaching Quality of Online Courses”and worked out"Evaluation Indicators for the Teaching Quality of Online Courses (For Trial Implementation)",which requires supervisors, leaders of teaching departments and teaching administration personnel to log in to the online teaching platform to monitor teaching operations. Furthermore, KUST issued“Notice on New-semester Teaching Inspection for the Second Semester of the Academic Year of 2019-2020”and inspected the first-week teaching in a new semester. In order to improveteachers’ online teaching ability, KUST organized teachers to participate in online teaching training programs of all online course platforms. With the joint efforts of teachers and students throughout KUST, online teaching has been conducted successfully, ensuring the teaching schedule and teaching quality and realizing the target of “Postponement of Schooling without Suspension of Teaching or Learning”.
Conference Link:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=Mzg5NDE4MTA2Ng==&mid=2247491460&idx=1&sn=6f6f8e3dad7ebe38af8c0af422949f22&chksm=c022d421f7555d37fb489c0747f659eb65e5d35d4e3cb18c3c71e15fcc166ba8a8fc9d5ebd30&mpshare=1&scene=23&srcid=&sharer_sharetime=1584795411843&sharer_shareid=cfcd208495d565ef66e7dff9f98764da#rd
Translated by: Wang Xiaoshan, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures
Edited by: REN Zhaoying, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures
Issued by: Division of Overseas Cooperation (English)
Source：Division of Teaching Administration (Chinese)
Edited by: KUST News Center (Chinese)
