In order earnestly put into effect the prevention and control measure “suspend classes but not learning” laid out by the Ministry of Education, the headquarters of the Open University of China (OUC) released the Notice on Prevention and Control of Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Epidemic (or COVID-19 Epidemic) on 31 January 2020.
The OUC headquarters asked the OUC system to work together to manage epidemic prevention and to suspend classes but not learning. By making use of the advantages of the internet and its own digital resources, the OUC offered open learning resources to individual learners, the public, and institutions of higher education. Online learning support has been provided in order to meet the public’s needs for both protection and diversified learning.
As of 13 March 2020, the OUC has offered 15,985 online courses and 108,915 micro-courses for free to 3.76 million people and 7,251 institutions. With up to 70.43 million page views, various members of society, institutions, and universities were able to suspend classes but not learning. The OUC online (www.oucapp.com) has offered 320 open online courses in the OUC cloud classroom, serving 230,813 people with 1,773,200 clicks. The OUC Publishing House and Media Group has developed “Psychological Guidance Series: Rational Epidemic Prevention Begins in the Mind” and “First Class Before the Start of the New Semester.” Moreover, 13 micro-courses and 458 online courses have been launched on the Hui Xue Xi course sharing platform (huixuexi.crtvup.com.cn), the Hui Xue Xi live broadcasting platform, and the Open Cloud Book House, serving 92,190 people with 4,570,742 clicks. The National E-Learning Resource Centre has developed “Sixty Micro Lectures for Novel Coronavirus Prevention and Control,” and launched micro-courses and online courses on platforms such as the Five-Minute Course Network (www.5minutes.com.cn), the U-Learning Network (www.mymooc.net.cn), the OUC General Education Course Platform, and the National E-Learning Resource Centre (www.nerc.edu.cn), serving 344,012 people with 9,294,443 clicks. The credit bank online platform (www.xueyinonline.com) has opened 3,464 MOOCs, serving 20,424 people. The OUC School of Vocational Education and Training has opened 50 class hours of video courses on OUC Xiang Xue Ba (www.xiangxue8.com), serving 823,828 people with 4,570,742 clicks. The Open University for Older Adults has launched 158 courses on the learning network the Open University for Older Adults (lndx.oucnet.cn) with a total of 113,000 visits. Open Edutainment (www.open.com.cn) served 3,038,959 people via the Open Wisdom Education Cloud Platform, Shi Xun Bao, the MOOC2U Alliance, and the APP Open Online Courses platform with 53,245,446 clicks. The Teacher Training School of the Department of External Education and Professional Training has developed training courses for teacher qualifications and launched 15 micro courses, serving 2,135 people with 3,633 clicks.
The OUC Online Cloud Classroom has made its high-quality degree education online courses available for sharing, including nine financial courses for experimental and practical training. Together with renowned enterprises such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and Huawei, it has integrated 14 artificial intelligence courses and five Taobao e-commerce courses, which are all open to the public free of charge.
According to general feedback from teachers, the OUC Publishing and Media Group’s Hui Xue Xi live Broadcasting Platform makes it easy to facilitate learning. In contrast to platforms like Tencent and iQiyi, it has fewer entertainment elements and is more suitable for teaching.
The Open Cloud Book House has helped teachers to find solutions to teaching materials for classes, which is very popular with teachers in Wuhan.
The 13-episode series of micro-courses developed by the OUC Publishing House and Media Group, Psychology and Health during the Epidemic, was broadcast online from 3-15 February with one episode airing per day. The latest statistics show that they have been popularised on eight platforms, including Xue Xi Qiang Guao (www.xuexi.cn), iQiyi (www.iqiyi.com), Bilibili (www.bilibili.com), and Xi Ma La Ya (www.ximalaya.com). Compared with statistics from last week, the view counts have nearly doubled. The series of micro courses broadcast online in 22 open universities and radio and TV universities have seen their view counts increase by nearly 20 times compared to last week. As public welfare teaching resources, the Psychology and Health in the Epidemic series of micro-courses has been provided for free to the OUC system and social channels. They have got as many as 470,000 views and a good response from across society.
The OUC Publishing and Media Group, in cooperation with the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), has invited authoritative experts to record a video titled “First Class Before New Semester Starts: How to Prevent COVID-19” for students and parents. The video course was opened to the public for free at the same time as it was launched in the OUC educational system and the China CDC system. Since 3 March, it has been put online on Xue Xi Qiang Guo, iQiyi, Bilibili. Shunyi District Community Education Centre, the RTVUs of Jiangxi, Hebei, Changchun, Guizou, Wuhan, and Hefei, and other community education platforms. Over 100,000 views have been recorded.
The National E-Learning Resource Centre has developed the Science-Based Epidemic Prevention micro-course, which has been played a total of more than 8.47 million times on the internet and mobile terminals. It was also put online on the skill learning platform for national industrial workers (skills.kjcxchina.com), Jin Ri Tou Tiao (www.toutiao.com), and the online learning platform for talents with industrial and information technology skills (www.tech-skills.org.cn).
Since 26 January, the Credit Bank has offered 3,464 MOOCs to all colleges and universities nationwide and helped 20,424 teachers in about 1,200 colleges and universities with online course selection, course development, and teaching. So far, a total of 4.15 million students have participated in online learning.
On 26 January, Open Edutainment opened the Shi Xun Bao platform for free to all national primary and middle schools. The platform covers 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the administration of the Central Government throughout the country by now, offering online learning to about 3 million students in about 5,000 primary and middle schools, and supporting online tutorial via questions and answers. To date, about 100,000 first line teachers have broadcast about 800,000 courses live via the Shi Xun Bao platform, for a total of more than 600,000 hours. The education bureaus of Hubei, Guizhou, Shanxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, Hainan, Tianjin, and Guangdong have made access universal, organised system training for those in charge of school management, and helped primary and middle schools to “suspend classes but not learning” in an all-round way.
Open Edutainment opened its open2U platform to higher vocational and polytechnic schools and provided vocational training resources. The students’ learning behaviour show that there are as many as 1,500 daily active students, the average number of daily visits is 1.6, and each average daily visit has increased to 16 minutes compared to 10 minutes a week ago.
On 3 February, the Open University for Older Adults of the Open University of China initiated the “Happy Learning and Epidemic Prevention” joint action. To date, more than 46 initiators have been united to launch a total of 31 free learning platforms and course resources to support the entire system and help society to learn online, including provincial open universities for older adults (with elderly people education institutions included), experimental schools for elderly people, and institutions, foundations, and enterprises for the care of old people. To fate, the initiators of the joint action have launch 31 learning platforms and 41,000 courses, adding up to 8,218,766 page views. The OUC Open University for Older Adults opened the “Happy Learning and Epidemic Prevention” joint action class for public benefit based on the learning network and the mini apps “seniors school 100,” as well as a series of courses for live broadcast, such as “Prescription for Older People’s Epidemical Mentality” and “Rational Use of Medicine for Older People.” The resources gave old people guidance on psychological adjustment and safe medicine use during the epidemic period. Today, this public benefit class has launched 158 courses with 113,000 page views, and the live broadcast classes have 3,827 viewers.
The OUC Training School’s Xiang Xue Ba platform, which is targeted at principals and teachers of kindergartens, as well as parents, has been positively publicised by local prior education administration management authorities including Shandong and Guizhou, and learning has been organised. In the 35 days since its opening, there have been 349,000 students with an average of over 20,000 times of learning. The average length of learning via mobile is 62 minutes and 47 minutes via computer.
The Learning and Development Guide for Children Aged 3-6 launched by the OUC School of Vocational Education and Training has become popular with education management authorities, teaching research authorities, kindergartens, colleges and universities, and parents. It is a guiding document not only for people within the early childhood education system but also for parents that can help them understand children’s developmental phases and implement education. Zhang Lin, a mother living in Japan, said that she has benefited a lot from the guide and recorded her gains from the learning. She said that, “During the epidemic, I was lucky to be able to learn how to interpret Learning and Development Guide for Children Aged 3-6 through an online class launched by the OUC Training School. The course describes children’s learning and development in the five fields of health, language, society, science, and arts, and sets out reasonable expectations for what children should know, what they can do, and what development level they can roughly reach at the end of each of the three age groups. At the same time, it gives specific, practical instructions and suggestions for parents and kindergarten teachers in response to any existing confusion or misunderstandings regarding pre-school education.” After studying the guide, a researcher in Xifeng County, Guizhou Province sent a letter of thanks, saying “The guide is a breath of fresh air for teachers in rural areas, which enables us to care about epidemic prevention and control as we teach ourselves to improve our own professional qualities online during our stay at home.” The course was listed by Tianjin Normal University as part of the content of the Academic Lectures for undergraduates of pre-school education to learn due to the delayed new semester, and the relevant examination and instructors have been arranged.
During this unprecedented epidemic, the OUC has leveraged its own advantages, pooled its strength, and stayed true to its mission of serving the country through education. By bravely shouldering this historical responsibility, it has distributed quality course resources to thousands of households, and truly implemented the call to suspend classes but not learning.
By OUC Learning Resources Department