Online video courses a boon for teachers

Having proven to be a useful tool during the epidemic, online courses will continue to be provided to students alongside on-campus education, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission announced on Aug 31.

These courses have already been made available for the 2020 autumn semester for elementary, middle, and high schools in Shanghai which reopened on Sept 1.

Among those tasked with recording courses is the Xuhui Institute of Education Shanghai, which will record high school courses for Chinese and information technology and elementary school courses for natural science this semester.

"The recording of online courses started when the epidemic broke out and it has continued even till today. These online courses can act as a backup teaching resource during an epidemic and can also be used as supplement for regular teaching," said Li Hong, deputy director of Xuhui Institute of Education Shanghai.

"These courses are also a good resource for our teachers' professional development and can be used as a case study in teacher training and classroom teaching research," she added.

More than 5,000 high-quality online video courses covering all basic subjects in schools were produced by the end of the spring semester in 2020, benefiting more than 1.4 million students from Grade 1 to 12.

According to Li, recording a course is not as simple as it seems — each video, which lasts only around 20 minutes, requires three teams of people and days to complete.

"The teaching team is responsible for ensuring the quality of the content, the technical team is responsible for recording, post-production, delivery audit and uploading, and the logistics support team ensures the safety of each team and is responsible for epidemic prevention and control," he explained.

"For example, our high school Chinese teaching team has selected 22 teachers this semester to be involved in the recording. A group of teaching researchers from the city and district levels are also involved in helping prepare, record, and check the lessons."

Li said that the institute recorded 566 classes last semester, accounting for about one-tenth of the total classes in the city. This semester, they will record around 300 classes.

"The biggest difference of the online course is it lacks interaction between teachers and students. Since teachers cannot see the students, they have to design different methods to achieve interaction in various disciplines," said Yuan Wenzheng, director of the Information Resource Center at Xuhui Institute of Education Shanghai.

"For example, our information technology course features three virtual students who can answer questions during the class. These avatar students will also accompany students throughout the entire learning process," Yuan said.

The introduction of the online courses has benefited teachers and not just students, said Fan Biao, a Chinese subject researcher of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission.

"Many teachers in other provinces said that such recording work promotes fairness in teaching because we can now share high-quality teaching resources. Video courses are indeed a great lesson preparation resource for teachers in many schools," said Fan.