Booming Online Education

“Teachers teach students through the Internet, and students can gain all kinds of knowledge through the Internet without leaving their homes.”

- LI YUAN

This was a premise of the sci-fi children’s book Pipilu and Luxixi published two decades ago. Few could have imagined it becoming a reality earlier this year.

The COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 changed the lives of people around the globe. The Chinese government encouraged people to stay at home to prevent and control the spread of the coronavirus. However, life needs to continue. The Ministry of Education required students to continue their studies via the Internet during the period of in-person class suspension. Fortunately, this has become achievable thanks to the rapid development of networking and Internet technology, and the establishment of 5G networks. More than 300 million teachers and students from across the country congregated online, and online teaching, as a supplement tool to enhance learning in the past, has become the only choice for both educators and students during the epidemic.

Rush to Online Learning

Jiahe, a middle school student, gets up at 8 o’clock every morning and turns on his mobile phone to receive a list of daily learning tasks and assignments from his teachers on various subjects through a WeChat applet. The district where his school is located has many high-quality educational resources. The district education committee gathered high-quality teachers and recorded 30-minute online videos of various subjects for students of all grades. His school, based on its teaching practice, also recorded school-level online courses as a necessary supplement and formulated detailed daily teaching schedules. Every weekend, he receives new learning tasks from the class advisor for the next week through the WeChat group, which contains video materials, class schedules, and homework materials.