School of Foreign Languages March, 2020
According to the schedule of the School of Foreign Languages, there were 45 online courses on the first day, including 15 courses in the first and second sessions, and 30 in the third and fourth sessions. In accordance with the requirements of the university’s Department of Teaching Affairs Management and the school’s Teaching Guiding Committee, each department reminded teachers on wechat groups to be on time this morning and log in the online teaching platform in advance for preparations. Up to noon, all work of teaching has proceeded in a normal and orderly manner. During the process of online teaching this morning, heads of each major supervised 30 online courses altogether, with a coverage rate of 67%.
According to the feedback from the leadership and professors who supervised the process, courses were held smoothly with the teachers’ proficiency of using the tools for online teaching and various different forms (PPT, videos, audios, etc.) to consolidate the teaching effects, from which we could tell all teachers have made sufficient preparations for the courses and for mastering the software. Students were very corporative with the online teaching. Despite of the influences brought by space, network and other factors, they all showed on time and interacted with the teachers to the most extent by using the online teaching softwares, contributing a lot to a teaching effect with high-quality.
According to the feedback from teachers and students, they were relatively satisfied with teaching softwares like Tencent Classroom, Tencent Video, Zoom and Learning Pass, etc. With their relatively complete and user-friendly functional design, these softwares can meet the various demands of online teaching. However, there still existed the situation where the network stuck, which affected the teaching process and effects, for example sounds and images were distorted because of network packet loss and delay; or students could not log in the classrooms due to busy server. Teachers and students hoped that the university could communicate with the software companies to ensure a smooth teaching process.
According to the feedback from some students, when there was little influence of the hardware equipment and the network fluctuation, teachers and students could use the softwares without any hindrance. Thanks to previous rehearsals, the interaction between teachers and students was well in order. But when the network was unstable, there were situations of delay during classes, for example, some students may fell behind of the normal speed due to network problems, so they heard the teacher’s question a bit later only to find out it was already answered and the class had moved on to new topics. There were some concerns before that online courses would lack efficiency, but it turned out to exceed our expectation. With teachers assigning homework and tasks for preview, the contents of the course were better organized and connected. In addition, some students reported that during peaking hours, problems like crowded platform would easily cause the situation where students missed their classes or being late. Busy servers also caused problems of logging out for no reason or simply unable to log in. But students could reach to their teachers and report the problems via WeChat groups.
English Department, Distinguished Professor Tan Zaixi is not only wealthy in knowledge but also good in online teaching!
English Department, Teacher Gaolin’s American Literature classes with vivid pictures and passionate voice!
English Department, Teacher Zhong Dong gave lectures in Australia! Nothing could stop the passion of our teachers to pass on knowledge.
English Department, Teacher Shang Xiaoqi woke up early to stand-by at the desk.
English Department, Foreign teacher David Gill also good at online teaching!
French Teacher Wang Lei, good screen figure, better class!
French Teacher Liang Ping, learning while watching films! Enjoyable time!
Japanese Department, Teacher Li Xiaobo, applying the method of pattern learning make Japanese learning easy!
Japanese Department, Foreign teacher Song Yong, meticulous on class as always!
Spanish Teacher Li Jing, grammar isn’t boring anymore with our teacher so beautiful and fair
Spanish Teacher Ma Liya is our Ace card in the department!
German Teacher Chen Zao, both PC and iPad, very professional!
German Teacher Chen Rong, these beautiful pictures arise my passion to study!
College English Department: Teaching in the Cloud brings a distant land near
Good education should be like breezes and raindrops in spring, nourishing students’ minds quietly. On March 9, 2020, over forty teachers in the College English Department began their first day of “suspended classes, ongoing learning”. According to the curriculums, teachers gave online lectures to over 90 classes which included over 4,000 students from all over the country.
The pandemic is merciless, but teachers’ love is unstoppable. Chen Xi, teacher of the College English Department who is from Wuhan said, “no matter how the pandemic develops, all we could do is to stay home, and care for those who are in Hubei: families, friends, colleagues and students. But what’s most important is to try my best to do well in online teaching, which is a huge challenge and also a new experience for me. Luckily, trainings organized by the university, testings with the teaching teams, and the attentive reminders from the leadership and teachers from Department of Teaching Affairs Managements all reassured me a lot. Meanwhile, I was gladly to see that students were all excited and looked forward to it, and that they missed having classes together and missed their teachers. During the online courses, students could share their screens to have presentations or discussions by individual or in groups. We could even apply a series of activities, such as real-time editing, online testing, asking questions at random, etc, to build a high-efficient classroom. I was a bit nervous for it’s the first time for me to give lectures in front of a camera, but I was more excited and motivated by this new change”.
Teacher Chen Xi, online teaching
The pandemic is merciless but students’ passion is unstoppable. Xiang Jingjing, a student from Hubei, was very exited when talking about the online courses. She said, “Teachers turned into anchors, and students could send virtual flowers to teachers via the online applications. It is indeed an novel approach of teaching. And this year’s English courses helped me a lot with my weak points which are writing and oral speaking. Although studying at home is not as real as studying in physical classroom, online teaching does allow me to continue my study while schools are suspended. It also gives me more time to make plans and re-explore my study interests.
Apply different platforms and tools to online teaching to create more study opportunities for students. College English Department adopts an online teaching plan which combines “Internet Learning Platform” and the method of “Teaching via Live Broadcast”. Based on the platform of UOOC, teachers can record high-quality SPOC courses which include key points of different subjects in advance. Through the platform, teachers can also assign tasks while students can study independently via two platforms (UOOC for reading and writing, U Campus for listening and speaking). Background data would be collected for teachers to monitor the work of students. In addition, teachers also offer online tutoring classes during which teachers can interact with students and answer their questions. All efforts are made to promote the high-efficient learning style which is cooperative and enables self-learning. College English Department aims to provide the best solutions for students during this special period of time. The Department offers 169 classes for college foreign languages, which are all held online except for two classes for Korean and classes for English. After repetitive discussions, three major teaching teams (A, B, C level) formed the consensus of adopting an alternative solution. It’s important to keep in mind that no matter how small a problem may seem at first, it will easily get complicated and turn into a big one considering the fact that there are over 6,000 students. Therefore, it’s of great significance to consider discreetly how to cope with the worst-case scenarios. And the Department decides to learn from the experiences of CUHK-Shenzhen (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen), and focus on each small detail.
Teaching Tasks
Setting up organizations to guarantee both quality and quantity. United with the Teaching Guiding Committee, Department of College English established a teaching working group for the period of epidemic prevention and control. From March 9 to March 20 (Week One and Week Two), group members will supervise all the online courses which are in the form of live internet broadcasting, focusing on students’ learning situation, teacher-student interaction, network support and emergency plan preparation. Any problem found is reported to the teachers in charge in time.
Working with multiple computers
Work in teaching affairs is busy but all in order and efficient, which ensures the smooth progress of online course selection, trial courses, and official courses. Since the winter vacation, in the beginning of February, Tian Yuan, secretary of Department of Teaching Affairs Management, has already begun to make preparations for the online teaching. She almost had to work everyday, sometimes even till twelve o’clock at night, trying to make sure this important but heavy task that involves over 6,000 students would go well. Only in the weeks of course selection, she had already responded over 600 emails from students. Such kindness and passion is as warm as spring breezes, and as fresh as the green grasses.
New technologies help with online learning. The Teaching Experiment Center of the School of Foreign Languages opened up to all students in the university who took College English courses. Through intelligent online foreign languages learning systems, such as U Campus Intelligent Teaching iCloud, iTest Intelligent Testing Platform, and Artificial-Intelligence Essays Reviewing Platform, etc, students could have access to improve their abilities in listening, speaking, reading and writing. So far, work of such relevant courses has been carried out smoothly. In order to solve the problems during the process of online teaching, the Department has issued a detailed study guide via the information interaction function of the learning system, and a shift of laboratory staffs has been arranged to answer students’ questions through mailbox. Since February 11, the staffs have solved over 800 students’s problems about choosing courses and learning online.
National level intelligent testing system
Misfortune might be a blessing in disguise. Wan Kaicheng, a second-year student from the School of Arts, said, “in this special but seemingly freer situation, if we do want to learn, I believe that we can learn better than ever before.” Just as what Yuan Lei, director of the Department of Teaching Affairs Management, has pointed out, the unexpected “crisis” can also be transformed into an opportunity to improve teaching concepts and promote educational reform.
