Prof. Xu Lei, vice president of Fudan University, wrote about the measures Fudan has taken in its online teaching over the past two months amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The following translation is an abridged version of Xu’s original article.
The COVID-19 prevention and control is still at a critical stage. To sail through the difficult time with the rest of the world, the Chinese Ministry of Education has called on the country’s higher education institutions to share their online teaching experiences and resources with the world and develop international versions of their current Chinese online education platforms. As a university with social responsibility, Fudan University has actively shared its best practices and experiences of remote teaching gained from years of online education.
Fudan University Handan Campus
Since 2013, Fudan University has gradually identified three categories of online courses for different needs of learners: 1. MOOC, available for all learners, is intended to expand the public’s access to Fudan’s high-quality courses; 2. Cross-institutional online course, available for all university students, is intended to provide more sources for students who yearn to learn more; 3. Mixed online course, available for students of Fudan University, is intended to effectively transform the traditional offline teaching model.
During the epidemic, most courses in Fudan University have been successfully adjusted to the changed needs. A total of 2,698 undergraduate courses have been moved online. Based on the two months of preparatory work and rehearsal, we provide five suggestions below for colleagues in the same situation:
Firstly, an overarching mechanism for coordination must be provided. At Fudan, the University’s department of teaching affairs is in charge of organizing and managing online teaching as a whole. The department has formed a good connection with other departments, including IT, teachers’ training and student management, in order to provide overall support for online teaching.
Secondly, teachers are supposed not only to know how to use online teaching facilities, but also to be able to reflect on themselves and make adaptations. Fudan University has recommended teachers to adopt a three-stage teaching mode—“pre-class, in-class, post-class”, and to see the need to move courses online as an opportunity (rather than a burden) to reform teaching methods for better. After weeks of implementation, online teaching has already showed good results: the ideas of learner-centered education and students’ proactive learning have been well-received among the teachers; the ability of professors to make use of digital resources and technology in teaching has been greatly improved. Also, the feedback from teachers and students is better than expected; as our survey shows, online teaching has facilitated interactions between teachers and students, which is an obvious advantage over traditional offline teaching.
Thirdly, the design of the courses is significant, for it will reduce possible weariness in the later stage of online teaching. Compared with offline teaching, online teaching lacks non-verbal communication between teachers and students. So the structure of a course becomes more important. Teachers should design a series of learning activities and tasks, and provide timely feedback to the students. Means to alleviate students’ fatigue and to enhance interactivity include Q&A sessions, surveys and discussions.
Fourthly, difficulties encountered by teachers and students in the course of online teaching must be solved in time. For instance, teaching administrators should be aware not all teachers and students have the same good network conditions and technical abilities, thus should provide technical assistance and policy support for those who need them; Themed salons can be given to help instructors optimize their curriculum design; capable teaching assistants can be recruited to relieve the instructors’ work pressure.
Fifthly, possible problems caused by online teaching should be considered in advance. Problems such as protection of intellectual property rights in lecture videos, instructors and students’ access to teaching materials, and the feasibility of online exams, need to be taken into account by the university as early as possible in the implementation of online teaching.
To share the Fudan experience with our colleagues worldwide. In mid-February, a video on Fudan's online teaching transformation was produced and put online in mid-February, which has so far received more than 95,000 views. With the same online teaching support, in late February, two medical experts of Fudan University, Zhang Wenhong and Wu Fan, gave a lecture on the prevention and control of COVID-19 for college students worldwide, and within the first two hours of the lecture, more than 2 million views were gained. In early April, invited by the Committee of 100, I gave a speech on “Massive Online Teaching and Learning in an Emergency Period”, sharing Fudan's experience with educators and administrators in the U.S.
Now, more than 130 online courses of Fudan University are available on domestic public platforms, providing high-quality learning resources for students in the country.
Fudan University will continue to make available high-quality online courses on international platforms in hope to do its part in the world's fight against the epidemic.
Editor: Deng Jianguo
