In the second semester of the 2019-2020 academic year, Shenzhen University offers 1685 classes, 3994 times in total (including experimental lessons), of which 3555 were online, accounting for nearly 90% of the total. Online teaching is carried out for theoretical courses and fully applied to basic general courses. 1685 teachers, together with 27,000-odd undergraduates, are engaged in online teaching and learning respectively.
The sudden outbreak of the Covid-19 virus has brought many challenges to teaching. As early as January 23, realizing the seriousness of the epidemic at the first time, the Teaching Affairs Department of SZU began to prepare for online teaching, implementing a series of online trainings and organizing on-line course selection. During this process, relevant leaders and teachers spared no efforts to make sound preparations.
On March 9, SZU officially began its online schooling. A total of 857 courses, covering 149 compulsory public courses, 423 core courses, 244 specialized elective courses and 41 public elective courses, were taught online, involving 36,974 students.
In order to ensure the smooth operation of such large-scale online teaching activities, each school of SZU set up a "Teaching Working Group in the Period of Epidemic Prevention and Control", to inspect and guide online teaching through monitoring the quality of online courses, especially live courses. Furthermore, a school-level Working Group of Quality Monitoring inspected online teaching materials and documents.
On the first day of online teaching, the Working Group of each school visited online classes to learn about teachers' lesson preparations and teaching effects. SZU's Undergraduate Teaching Supervision Team inspected the preparation of teaching materials and conducted spot checks on some online courses. Meanwhile, the Teaching Affairs Department of SZU supervised the teaching situation and solved emerging problems. On the whole, the online teaching worked well.
In the critical period to prevent and control the epidemic, SZU has formulated plans for online teaching implementation in accordance with the requirements of guaranteeing "safety, order, quality and quantity" and the principle of "starting schooling without returning to campus and suspending classes". At the same time, SZU relies on the platform of the University Open Online Courses (UOOC) to provide teaching resources, technical services and teacher-student training for universities across the country, contributing its own "SZU Strength". Since teaching innovation is vigorously promoted by SZU, the original schemes can be summarized as “one center, two objectives, three modes, four requirements, and five links”.
Processor Wu Wei explains painting skills and demonstrates the painting process in an online fine arts lesson.
Students practicing painting
To ensure the quality of online teaching, all program leaders audited the online classes. Among them are Professor Fan Yue, Dean of the School of Architecture & Urban Planning, and Zhong Botao, CPC Secretary of the School of Architecture & Urban Planning. They made use of the video interaction with teachers and students during the class break, to encourage teachers and students to overcome difficulties and strive for "teaching" and "learning" well. In the meanwhile, they connected with four students and three teachers, all from Hubei province, to reassure them that the School would provide them with help and support them during their life, study and teaching.
