In the Spring and Summer of 2022, College of Education of Zhejiang University is launching a series of short-term academic exchange programs online, as some parts of the country have been impacted by the COVID-19.

    The first conducted program, namely "Education and Research in the Digital Era", is well underway, taught in English and accessible to students from different majors. The online exchange program has been actively registered by more than 60 students, including undergraduate, master's and doctoral students. From April to June, a total of eight lectures will be provided as scheduled, three of which have been successfully carried out so far.

    On April 4th, Professor LIM Cher Ping, chair professor of Learning Technologies and Innovation, associate dean of Faculty of Education and Human Development, at the Education University of Hong Kong, delivered a lecture named "Who are the 21st Century Educators?". Prof. Lim proposed that educators in the 21st century should be with the joint strength of teachers, parents, decision-makers and community workers, and pay special attention to the cultivation of key literacy and ability, such as problem solving, criticism and reflection, creation and innovation, moral judgment, effective communication, social interaction, global vision and cultural awareness. Besides, the way to realize learning innovation driven by science and technology was discussed later, he explained that virtual reality, 3D printing, blended learning and other techniques will be the engine for education in the digital era. Through responding questions from the participants, Prof. Lim explained his unique understandings of educational equity, lifelong learning, and current employment challenges.

On April 16th, Dr. Nanxi Meng, senior lecturer at University of North Texas, gave a lecture with the theme “Instructional Design for Corporate Setting: PBL and Scenario Based Learning Backward Designed”. Dr. Meng introduced corporate-oriented backward design, which means making the instructional design from learning outcomes, assessment, learning activities to content. Different from the traditional instructional design path, being instructional designers for corporates requires us to act as “learning architect”, “learning analysis”, “experience designer”, “complex concepts articulator”, “performance coach”, “learning and development expert”, “trainer” as well as “strategic development facilitator”. Therefore, Program-based Learning (PBL) and Scenario-based Learning (SBL) were emphasized as two proven and effective methods.

On April 30th, Dr. CHEN Gaowei, associate professor from Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong, presented a report on “Statistical Analysis of Online Discourse”. Dr. CHEN first introduced the definition and role of online academic discussion. Later by examining a specific example, he listed the factors which might affect messages’ responsiveness. To offer more intuitionistic information, he collated and integrated the above into a hypothesis diagram. On top of that, Dr. CHEN explained the steps of collecting and analyzing data for the statistical analysis of online discourse, among which he especially shared the skills and tips to both conduct multi-dimensional coding for content analysis and draw non-linear trees of messages in detail. In accordance with the literature review and the result of data analysis, Dr. CHEN unveiled the strategies that teachers could take to improve the interaction and efficiency of online academic discussion.

The previous three lectures have attracted much attention from teachers and students. It’s expected that the wide range of academic exchange activities could foster students with innovative spirit and critical thinking, stimulating individual development with stronger research interest and knowledge innovation.

LEI Peng, ZHU Jing, SHAO Zhuoyue, LI Xinman & XIA Jingyan