From pre-recording to livestreaming, online learning improves amid COVID-19

YINCHUAN, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- Sitting in an empty classroom with a dictionary in hand, Zhang Haiyan showed her students online how to look up a word in a dictionary as a laptop camera streamed the study session.

"Who can tell me on which page the character 'Ge' is," she asked, followed by answers input by her students flashing on the screen.

Zhang is a Chinese language and literature teacher at the fourth primary school of Xingqing District in Yinchuan, capital of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

With a fresh resurgence of COVID-19 reported in many parts of China, including Beijing, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, educational authorities have ordered affected areas to suspend in-person classes and offer courses online.

In Ningxia alone, all six county-level areas that have reported COVID-19 cases in the latest outbreak have suspended in-person classes for more than 467,000 students at all local kindergartens, primary schools and middle schools, Tian Xilin, an official with the regional education department, told a press briefing on Tuesday.

In addition to the pre-recorded videos aired online, the region has organized teachers to offer interactive courses and help clear doubts through livestreaming, said Tian.

Teacher Zhang said that last year her school was not able to determine whether the students were present or not for the pre-recorded courses. However, through the livestreaming platform, teachers can now see not only the number of attendees but also their names.

"If students are absent or perform poorly on their homework, we will contact their parents for supervision," she said.

He Cuiling, president of the school, said they were ready to deal with the impact of the epidemic resurgence.

The school has distributed mobile phone tripods to teachers for livestreaming, and lent some tablet computers to the students who do not have online class gadgets.

"The livestreaming platform has been upgraded, enabling the school to monitor all the online courses for assessment and feedback," said He.

He Anning, director of the faculty development center of Xingqing district education bureau, said that in early 2020, students of the same grade could study with the unified pre-recorded videos, as all schools across the region began the new semester online at the same time due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

"The latest resurgence, however, cut the semester in the middle with different classes being at different curriculum progress, leading to the demand for a targeted approach in online course content," the official said, adding that livestreaming platforms have been able to meet the demand, allowing teachers to teach their own courses online.

Li Wenxing, president of Shengyuan primary school in the city of Wuzhong, said the school requires its students to watch the unified video classes on television during the day, and livestreaming interactive sessions are arranged in the evening.

"We livestream after 6 p.m. so that parents don't have to leave their mobile phones to their children at home during the daytime for the classes," Li said.

An Siwen, a fifth-grade student, said she used to lose track of the content easily while watching the pre-recorded videos on television.

"Now, with my own teacher livestreaming and occasionally asking me about my homework or study-related questions, I can concentrate better," she said.

Despite attending school remotely from home, An attends the routine flag-raising ceremony, held every Monday in Chinese schools, wearing her school uniform. She sang the national anthem during the online ceremony, just as she did on campus.

An said she hopes the epidemic to end soon and return to campus as soon as possible.

"I miss my classmates. I want to study together with them," she said.