The COVID-19 pandemic, which has been raging around the world for more than a year, has brought unprecedented challenges to the world, wreaking havoc on the education system and traditional education models.
In the context of the epidemic, we should summarize and apply the accumulated experience and advantages, and use MOOCs and online education to promote the transformation of higher education, and flourish in a more open, integrated and resilient direction.
Hybrid teaching innovation will be the future
After years of efforts and "forced innovation" after the epidemic, MOOCs in China have developed rapidly, and teachers and students have deepened their understanding and participation.
As of the end of April 2021, the number of MOOCs online in China has exceeded 36,000, with 616 million learners, and the number and application scale of MOOCs have ranked first in the world.In May 2021, the online education research center of the Ministry of Education conducted a survey on the application of MOOCs in-school, that is, online open curriculum teaching management, carried out by various universities in various regions of the country.According to the 31290 valid questionnaires recovered, the five keywords with the highest frequency of students' views on online open courses were "convenient", "good", "efficient", "convenient" and "open".
The quality of online open courses determines its wide application in universities and colleges, and the survey examines students' concern about quality through various angles.
First of all, online course learning requires students' level of information technology, and to obtain a high-quality online course learning experience requires students to have the necessary technical conditions such as networking and equipment.In the survey, 86% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they were proficient in using information technology for "online open-course" learning.
Second, from the perspective of course content quality, 88 percent of respondents said they value or value the quality of online open courses, and 81 percent rated the quality of online open courses they took positively.
Third, from the perspective of the quality of course operation, 81% of respondents expect schools to be equipped with assistant teachers or teaching assistants to guide them in conducting "online open course" learning.
It is not difficult to see that today's college students as digital natives, their information literacy is constantly improving, and the asynchronous teaching resources represented by MOOCs can be learned "everywhere, everywhere, everyone".It is an important direction for universities to continue to build and innovate high-quality curriculum content, promote high-quality curriculum operation, and promote the innovation of MOOC-based online and offline hybrid teaching mode.
Technology unleashes teaching potential
Since the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, "Internet +" and "Intelligent +" technology have been widely used in teaching, and the former is constantly improving the integration of information technology and education.
Take Tsinghua University's independent research and development of intelligent teaching tools in 2016 - rain classroom as an example.Before the outbreak of the epidemic, the development of rain classrooms was mainly driven by the construction of MOOCs and the development of online education.
This is an unprecedented scale and speed of learning and technological innovation driven by two-wheel drive education scene innovation.It fully relies on the experience and confidence gained by teachers in conducting online teaching during the epidemic, and empowers teachers to incorporate technology into their curriculum organization models.At the same time, it is also a conceptual update and model change that teachers, students, developers, and teaching managers are constantly exploring together.
In the fall semester of 2020, Tsinghua University has three times as many classes as in the fall semester of 2019, and four times as many interactions between teachers and students as in the same period of 2019.
In 2020, Rain Classroom Support Services provided online teaching to 1,381 universities across the country.During this period, teachers issued 2.28 million courseware, 5.31 million exercises, and organized more than 1.43 million online exams; students answered more than 240 million questions, published 157 million bullet screens, and participated in 7.18 million exams.
In short, with the help of technology, teachers can use the precipitated teaching and learning data to understand each student and refine the teaching design; students can get timely feedback through automated tools to quickly test their learning.Looking back at the changes in the way science and technology interact with humans, we may need to constantly stimulate our imagination to think, explore, and practice changes in technology to knowledge dissemination, teacher-student interaction, and so on.
Online education has become an organic part of global higher education
The outbreak and continuing spread of COVID-19 have cast a shadow over the globalization of higher education.With the overall improvement of higher education curriculum in China, education administration departments, universities and platforms have jointly explored and actively used online education to promote international cooperation in higher education teaching.
On April 10, 2020, the Ministry of Education held the "National Online Teaching International Platform Course Construction Video Conference" to launch the English version of the university's online teaching international platform construction project.So far, the two platforms have taken about 800 courses online, radiating nearly 300,000 learners worldwide.
The 2020 World MOOC Conference calls for countries to adhere to the concept of win-win cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, continue to increase MOOC and online education resources construction, and strengthen the application and sharing of MOOC and online education resources.The use of online education to strengthen cooperation in post-epidemic higher education has also gained widespread global support.
At the University Presidents' Global Forum on "Rethinking the Future and New Mission of Online Education" hosted by Tsinghua University in April 2021, the presidents said that higher education leaders need to realize a new perspective on global higher education.In this community, higher education institutions can share knowledge and experience, and students have access to higher education resources wherever they are in the world, which also creates opportunities for them to access more diverse education.
In addition, this cooperation and integration of diverse backgrounds and resources is not limited to universities, but will also break through its walls and extend the convenience and accessibility of online technologies to businesses, governments and international organizations.
Therefore, whether it is accompanied by the continuous spread of overseas epidemics or the occasional outbreak in China, we need to fully realize that MOOCs and online education have become an integral part of global university education.In the future, teachers and students will be able to teach and learn anytime, anywhere, and our technology, teaching methods and mechanisms will ensure the quality of teaching and learning.
In short, with the dynamic changes in the external environment, the continuous improvement of teacher-student information literacy, the iterative upgrading of technology, and the emergence of new educational scenarios, the global consensus on online education cooperation.Against this background, we also need to continuously innovate MOOC and online education to enable university teaching patterns and forms, and have sufficient expectations and confidence in the transformation of higher education.