“As we face unprecedented global challenges, it is time to reflect on what makes a university great. Universities should proactively respond to challenges and shoulder responsibilities to demonstrate their commitment to society,” said QIU Yong, President of Tsinghua University. He noted that the essence of education is to empower the lives of students, with the prerequisite of ensuring their health and well-being. Universities should take the safety and health of students, faculty and staff as their top priority. To curb the spread of the disease, Tsinghua has begun offering online classes to students across the country and the world since Febuary 17th, 2020. “Teaching and learning should not be undermined under any circumstances. University education is neither spontaneous nor sporadic. Rather, it is a well-designed systematic program with comprehensive planning.” Qiu noted.
Since 2020, Tsinghua has maintained close contact with other university leaders and global partners, exchanging best practices and providing mutual support. Meanwhile, massive online resources to the public have been opened, and “clone class” courses created to share online educational resources with universities in Wuhan and other remote areas, and a team of medical workers dispatched to Wuhan and volunteer works organized, both online and off-line. Qiu stressed that “universities serve as the lighthouse of human civilization. We share a common objective, which is to make the world a better place. At this critical moment, universities should play an essential role in promoting confidence, trust and unity among the whole world. Together, stronger.”
During the extraordinary year of 2020, Tsinghua University has hosted over 100 presentations from 75 institutions across 24 countries to exchange experiences and share best practices of online teaching and learning. In order to consolidate online education insights and ideas from experts and practitioners from across the world, Tsinghua University curated an online lecture series (MOOC) with a proposed framework to better understand the development of online education and to help guide the thinking about the future and new mission of online education.
- Introduce to learners a framework to better understand the development of online education.
- Provide learners online education insights and ideas from experts and practitioners from across the world, particularly during the extraordinary year of 2020.
- Guide learners to think about the future and new mission of online education.
- Unit 1 — Three Decades of Online Education Development
- Unit 2 — Online Education 1.0 (technological development)
- Unit 3 — Online Education 2.0 (pedagogical development)
- Unit 4 — Online Education 3.0 (managerial development)
- Unit 5 — Online Education 4.0 (sustainability & global development)
- Unit 6 — Future and New Mission of Online Education