By Tobias Bolli, Junior Project Manager Academic Relations
As COVID-19 continues its spread in what has officially become a global pandemic there is hardly any country remaining unaffected by its exponential growth. In order to flatten the curve and turn a wave of concurrent cases into a somewhat more manageable “rising tide”, countries are resorting to unprecedented measures. Public life is shutting down and many schools in Europe and America are forced to close their doors. On March 13 Switzerland announced that all schools and universities are to be closed until at least April 4. Luckily, not being able to access a physical classroom doesn´t necessarily prevent students from continuing their studies. In China up to 200 million pupils have been taking classes online. Other countries are shifting classes from offline to online too, thus further expanding and normalizing digital education.
In this webinar our two speakers addressed the characteristics of so-called MOOCs – massive open online courses and their heightened importance during the COVID-19 pandemic. As indicated by their name, MOOCs are open to anybody wishing to enroll. They mix traditional teaching methods (such as filmed lectures) with formats that allow for more interaction between participants. Before the two speakers gave their presentation, our moderator Dr. Garif Yalak, Head of Digital Transformation Healthcare and Education, Country Digital Acceleration Switzerland, reminded the audience that digital education is on the rise overall, with or without accounting for the current COVID-19 situation. He pointed out that the digital education industry in China is predicted to double its growth in the next three to five years, with factors such as a growing online population, and an education-hungry middle class with more and more spending power contributing to its growth. Moreover, Dr. Yalak mentioned increased user number for his company Cisco Switzerland, with more and more students leveraging their online platform to obtain European certifications.
Our three participants in full swing with Libing Gu, Head of Academic Relations at swissnex China guiding through the webinar.
Dr. Jermann, Director of the Center for Digital Education at EPFL, presented an overview of the MOOC activities at EPFL. When they started in 2012, EPFL was one of the first European universities to join the MOOC movement. Dr. Jermann focused on approaches that mix traditional learning with the benefits of digital technologies. In so called flipped classrooms students typically watch filmed lectures online and subsequently solve exercises with their professors on campus. Comparing this approach with traditional lectures, Dr. Jermann was able to demonstrate that blended learning leads to better outcomes especially for students with weaker performances. Flipped classrooms also allowed the extraction of interesting data regarding learning behavior. Students don´t just click the start button when watching online lectures, but often pause and go back and forth between slides. The analysis of these navigation patterns helps to identify key moments in the lecture. For instance, if a high percentage of students rewind after having seen a particular slide then this indicates that the professor might want to give a more in-depth explanation of the topic in question. In addition to exploring the implications of clicking data, Dr. Jermann developed a tool for students to self-asses their learning habits. Individual feedback can then be used to improve an individual´s learning behavior. The distinct advantage of such a databased approach is the ability to pinpoint what actually works. Thus there is no longer any need to rely on anecdotes when it comes to assessing certain teaching methods.
A couple of highlights from the plentiful presentation slides of our speakers.
Prof. Yongkang Su, Operation Director of CNMOOC at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, talked about MOOCs from a Chinese perspective. Just like the Swiss university Shanghai Jiao Tong University launched their MOOC initiative around 2014. Its declared goal is to close the education gap between the east and west of China and to make quality education available to everyone. Subsequently, a myriad of massive open online courses were launched and have changed the education landscape. Prof. Su presented some numbers to illustrate the scope of MOOCs in China. More than 100 universities offer online courses today, over 268 million students have enrolled in one, and 80 million have earned credits through taking such classes. The success of MOOCs even lead to the coining of new words. Prof. Su mentioned the expression十八线女主播 (literally “eighteenth tier female anchor”). It describes teachers who shifted their teaching activites online and feel like third grade vloggers now – having lost some of the prestige traditionally bestowed on Chinese teachers. Prof. Su also highlighted some challenges for online education. For example bandwidth problems might occur as a result of too many students attending courses at the same time. Moreover, internet connections aren´t reliable yet in certain parts of China. Mountain areas in particular suffer from unstable connections, forcing students to move down to catch a signal. Lastly, digital education provides a lot of new tools, but these tools can be confusing at first and even get in the way of teaching.
During the Q&A session Prof. Su mentioned that online degrees still lack the necessary social acceptance in China, even though some of the technological basis for it is already in place. Asked about the impacts of the current COVID-19 situation, he confirmed that the reaction to the pandemic has given digital education a significant boost and further normalized its widespread use. Dr. Jermann pointed out that teachers don´t have a choice these days but are forced into online teaching. He acknowledged that the abrupt nature of this transition might lead to some quality compromises since good online education is about more than filming a lecture and putting it online. On the other hand, Dr. Jermann continued, we will learn many valuable lessons during these times, some of which can also be implemented in traditional offline settings. It is thus wrong to think of digital education merely as a disruptive force. Digital education will not replace traditional education, but enrich and transform it, he commented.
We would like to thank Dr. Jermann and Prof. Su for their excellent presentations and Dr. Yalak for moderating the event. Last but not least, we thank our viewers for having participated in the event and for all the interesting questions during the Q&A session!
The webinar recording and slides are available to download below:
swissnex team working behind the scenes to ensure a smooth webinar experience.
