Online teaching has become essential for continuing education during the virus outbreak, sparking innovation with current teaching models. Conducting online teaching on a large scale in such a short time has brought unprecedented challenges to college administrators and teachers.

Zhu Xuemei, vice director of the Digital Education Evaluation Research Center at Nanjing Normal University, began studying online teaching models in the 1990s. During the epidemic, she took advantage of her solid theoretical foundation to answer problems and questions raised by colleagues on how to prepare and teach online courses.

Wang Zhi, dean of the School of Marxism at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said that offline classes often skip over chances for students to ask questions and express ideas because they are rushing to catch up with a syllabus, but online teaching provides time and space to compensate for gaps, providing opportunity for more direct communication.

Although online teaching cannot provide on-the-spot guidance and communication like traditional courses, it possesses prominent advantages, such as no space limitations, more personalized study and the integration of the processes of “teaching, studying, evaluating, researching and managing," Zhu said.

Cao Taisheng, vice dean of the Institute of Education at Nanjing University, said that education administration departments, colleges and teachers are now familiar with the connection between teaching activities and modern technologies thanks to the massive implementation of online teaching during the outbreak.

He said that educators should catch up with modern teaching technologies and improve their teaching quality. Furthermore, it is necessary to be critical and reflective, regard human development as the essence of education, and emphasize the essential role of social interaction in the process of student growth. Modern education technology can enhance this human interaction, and thus it must be explored.

This global implementation of online teaching is a revolution in the area of higher education and will promote the formulation of a new education ecology. Guo Yingjian, dean of the School of Foreign Languages at Renmin University of China, said that we should recognize the practical function and internal value of online teaching and accept that this education model can be a standard type of university education in the future. In addition, we should carefully reflect on the meaning and weaknesses of offline education and consider how to combine the advantages of the two modes and implement integrated education. Teachers should take this opportunity, change their opinions and roles, and shift their focus from evaluating their own teaching to assessing students’ learning results.

Integrated teaching can use off-line classes as the site for instruction while providing assistance online, Zhu said. She hopes that universities will take the lead in digital education, include integrated teaching into their syllabi, and redesign online teaching management and evaluation systems. Teachers need to increase their skill with information technologies and make use of more methods to guide students to deep learning and cultivate their creativity.

Chu Zhaohui, a research fellow with the National Institute of Education Sciences, said that it is necessary to utilise the flexibility of online teaching to provide diversified content for different student groups, giving them more choices and achieving more personalized education. We must evaluate the learning results during this period of online teaching and fix problems.

(Edited and translated by Niu Xiaoqian)