Turn crisis into opportunity in response to COVID-19: experience from a Chinese University and future prospects

ABSTRACT

The outbreak of COVID-19 has triggered a worldwide upsurge in online education. This paper first reviews the actions implemented by Tsinghua University in response to COVID-19 as an example. Based on the experience, the paper further discusses how to turn the ‘forced innovation’ happened in the pandemic into an ‘anti-pandemic dividend’ that could expedite the transformation of higher education, through institutionalizing and normalizing the actions taken under the outbreak.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• online education
• blended learning‌
• new normal
• education transformation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Launched by Tsinghua University in 2016, Rain Classroom integrates complex information technologies into PowerPoint and WeChat. It enables teachers to send preview courseware containing MOOC video, exercises and voice to students’ mobile phone and receive students’ feedback to smoothen the communication between teachers and students; it supports real-time Q&A and interactions by bullet screen (known as ‘Dan Mu’ in Chinese, which is an emerging new feature on online video sites in China and Japan, that allows real-time comments from viewers to fly across the screen like bullets) in class to enhance teacher-student interaction; it scientifically covers every teaching link from pre-class, in-class to post-class and provide teachers and students with complete and multi-dimensional data support, personalized report and automatic task reminder, which ensure more effective teaching and learning.

2 Bauhinia, known as ‘Zi Jing’ in Chinese, is the flower of Tsinghua University.

3 The so-called ‘dividend’ refers to the objective benefits not obtained by active and intentional actions but resulted from the natural development of facts and reality. It is borrowed from the concept of ‘Demographic Dividend’, which means ‘the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure’. ‘Anti-epidemic dividend’ can be reflected in many aspects of the country and society. This paper argues that the practices of oneline teaching and education that colleges and universities were forced to take in response to the COVID-19 outbreak can bring long-term benefits if those practices can be implemented on an ongoing basis through institutionalization and normalization.

4 AP represents Advanced Placement, which is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board that offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school students.

5 STEM courses means courses in the fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths.