The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused profound changes in politics, economy, and society, as well as people’s lives. In the field of higher education, online education has attracted widespread attention and undergone rapid development, which has had a far-reaching impact on the reform and development of the sector. During the pandemic, the unique advantages of online education showed great potential and value for both teaching and learning, and it has greatly changed teaching and learning methods.
Along with the further improvement of people’s understanding of the importance of online education, this kind of education will be given ever more prominence in terms of its status and role in talent training. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a thorough analysis of and summarise in detail the external driving forces and inherent advantages of the rapid development of online education, further update the concept of online education, and reform its education models while bearing in mind both current and long-term needs so as to promote the development of online education in a better and faster way and serve the fundamental task of talent training.
External driving forces for the rapid development of online education
Online education is currently undergoing rapid development in the higher education field since it was introduced to the sector in the late 20th century. In analysing the external driving forces for the development of online education, the demand for quality education should come first. Since China has realised the creation a well-off society in an all-round way, the demand for quality education is increasingly urgent. The fundamental task of education is to foster virtue through moral education and promote all-round human development. However, at present, the development of higher education is still unbalanced and inadequate. As a result, developing online education at a larger scale is an important way to better solve the problem of sharing high-quality higher education and meet the demand for lifelong learning.
Technological development should be the second factor analysed. With the support of modern information technology such as the Internet, the production and transmission of knowledge is undergoing profound changes. The advent of the network information age has enabled technology to be widely and deeply applied in teaching. New technologies and equipment such as mobile communication, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain have been introduced to the field of education, and have been well integrated with educational concepts. New course resource forms such as micro lectures and Massive Open Online Courses ( MOOCs) and new teaching forms such as flipped classrooms are an important direction for teaching reform in colleges and universities. Online education, represented by “Internet Education,” has become an important trend in higher education reform.
The final factor is the catalysed effect of the external environment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest online education experiment ever was launched worldwide. During the period of epidemic prevention and control, in order to ensure the safety of teachers and students, China’s education departments decided to postpone the 2020 spring semester and encouraged teachers and students to use online education resources and platforms for teaching activities. With the spread of the pandemic, many renowned foreign colleges and universities also stopped offline courses and took teaching completely online. Many universities and public welfare institutions used online means to hold academic lectures and open educational resources to realise knowledge and information sharing during the pandemic.
The inherent advantages of the rapid development of online education
The first of the inherent advantages of the rapid development of online education is that it is conducive to giving effective access to online education to target populations. It is an urgent task for education and a major mission for higher education to construct an education system that serves lifelong learning of all, develop a more open and flexible education system targeted at and suitable for every citizen, and build a learning society. During and after the pandemic, the of reshaping online education can effectively expand the scale and scope of educational coverage , achieve effective and accurate coverage of target populations, and make it possible for learners to learn in an all-round way and engage in self-regulated, personalised lifelong learning.
The second advantage is convenience for the learners. Due to limitations of time and space, it is difficult for traditional education to meet diverse and personalised learning needs. However, online education breaks through this limitation, making the flow and exchange of information and knowledge unimpeded. Learners in different countries and with different amounts of time to learn can access education resources flexibly and conveniently via online education. Learning in different time zones and locations highlights the convenience of online education, which has been integrated into the mainstream of higher education and become an integral part of the higher education system. With the popularisation and normalisation of online education, the learning results of online education are now also generally recognised by regular colleges and universities in China and abroad, further increasing its convenience.
The third advantage is it removes the educational barriers caused by social distance. As predicted by the World Health Organization, the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to continue to spread. Social restrictions may remain in place in the long-term, and may even become the new normal. Therefore, for education, especially higher education, online education helps to break down the barriers of location and time, providing a platform for people-to-people and people-to-machine interactions, as well as effectively supporting a large number of online teaching and research activities. It can be predicted that against the context of global instability and uncertainty, online education will be increasingly relied on in order to realise the major functions of higher education.
Take part in efforts to construct high-level online education
In order to construct a high level of online education, it is necessary to conscientiously study and implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and implement the fundamental task of moral education in accordance with the educational policies established by the Communist Party of China, in order to train qualified personnel and a new type of talented professional for China's national development. It is necessary to enforce the new development concepts of innovation, coordination, green development, openness, and sharing in order to realise scientific development and serve for the establishment of a new development landscape. It is also essential to make full use of state-of-the-art science and technology and to strengthen collaboration and innovation in the theory, system, model, and technology of online education. At present, it is necessary to focus on the following tasks.
The first is to integrate online and offline teaching and achieve complementary strengths. Online and offline teaching each has irreplaceable advantages, as well as its own problems and shortcomings. It is necessary to adopt a learner-centred concept and integrate online and offline teaching in a scientific ways in order to achieve complementary advantages. To do so, the important parts of online and offline teaching and tutoring should be combined, and teaching, learning, practices, testing, and evaluation should be designed and planned according to educational directions, the requirements of disciplines, and teaching content scenarios. Meanwhile, it is necessary to actively expand teaching spaces to combine online learning communities with offline study centres, commit to the continuous improvement of learning experiences, and innovate the learner support model. It is also necessary to form a scientific, reasonable, and effective teaching modality and path by pooling resources, the reasonable division of labour, and optimising management and comprehensive supervision, and on the basis of the construction of a platform integrating online and offline education.
The second is to build online “premium lecture” clusters and lay a foundation of courses for talent training. Premium lectures are an important basis for colleges and universities to promote the development of disciplines and programmes in majors. In conjunction with the rapid development of online education, colleges and universities should vigorously develop offline premium lectures, while also making efforts to construct a group of online premium lectures and realise the deep integration of course content, teaching methods, and information technology in order to promote the transformation of online education from seeking operation opportunities to pursuing excellence. Looking to the future, it is necessary further leverage global high-quality teaching resources, use a variety of information technology means, build a high-level online curriculum system that can be applied to the whole teaching process to transfer high-quality curriculum content, form an intelligent learning environment, and effectively improving the quality of online teaching.
The third is to construct a teaching quality assurance mechanism with the use of big data. Online education has given rise to the application and popularisation of big data in education and has also reconstructed the teaching quality monitoring model and feedback guarantee mechanism. Among all indicators of the existing online education quality evaluation standards, support services for teachers and student participation and interaction attract the most concern. The acquisition of data related to these depends on the information of the whole teaching process and in all-round teaching aspects provided via big data technology. Establishing a platform for the collection and analysis of big data relating to the quality of classroom teaching and a quality normal monitoring system, and recording and collecting special data of all teaching and learning behaviours will help teachers further adjust teaching and improve their teaching quality and level. The formation of a feedback loop and precise supervision mechanism for teaching quality monitoring in a big data environment is of great significance in the establishment of a better teaching quality assurance system.
The fourth is to implement a strategy of quality lectures by famous teachers and build a high-level online education teaching team. It is necessary to cultivate a high-level teaching team that can effectively use online teaching methods. Efforts should be paid to build a teaching team made up of full and part-time famous teachers in online education. This can be achieved by introducing external professionals in combination with the training and improvement of current teachers in order to improve the overall level of online teaching. To achieve this goal, in addition to improving the information technology level, resource integration ability, and teaching adaptability of current teachers, it is also necessary to free our minds from the shackles of the traditional teacher system framework, conduct in-depth studies of information technology and education reform, innovate teachers’ learning models, and promote the transformation of concept related to the professional development of teachers and the innovation of the development mode. At the same time, we should construct a teacher evaluation system based on a combination of online and offline means and reform and improve teacher evaluation, so as to achieve the comprehensive improvement of the quality of teaching team.
The fifth is to rely on advanced technology to form a new efficient teaching management and service system. Online education has transformed traditional education ideas and practices, and also reconstructed the teaching management and service system. In the context of online education, interactive management and services that highlight relevance, systematisation, and collaboration have become a new requirement. Colleges and universities should change their traditional one-track thinking and single management and service modalities and establish a data-based teaching management system and personalised learning support service model. They should expand the service scope of online education and gradually change traditional management and services into teaching management and support services that meet the needs of online learning, while also attaching importance to the flexibility, effectiveness, and experience of teaching management and service model. Therefore, it is necessary for all parties to participate, break down barriers, and form a broad consensus of online education, and, starting from this basis, as well as relying on continuous interaction and communication between education and information technology, teaching and management, and teachers and students, form an intelligent teaching management and service system.
About the author: Cao Guoyong, executive deputy secretary of the OUC Party Committee
By OUC News Network, reprinted from China Higher Education