The Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia epidemic has brought a profound influence on the people's safety and health, meanwhile, education was severely affected. Now we are stepping into the “post-epidemic era”, during this special period of global fight against Covid-19, online communication has become an important bridge for the convergence and exchange of different ideas and perspectives. In the post-epidemic era, the global education development also stands at a critical point of transformation.

From May 20th to June 11th, ZJU’s College of Education is to hold an online exchange program with the theme of “Trends and Challenges in Global Education in the Post-Epidemic Era”. The College of Education invited renewed experts and scholars in relative fields from prestigious colleges and universities across the globe, including University of Oxford, University of California, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, to deliver lectures for faculty and students at Zhejiang University.

 Prof. YAN Wenfan, from the University of Massachusetts in Boston, shared his rethinking of college teaching and learning after COVID-19. He guided us to rethink from three perspectives, namely, “where we have been, where we are now and where we want to go”. He thought the COVID-19 epidemic has revealed the huge potential for education innovation in many education systems, thus it has made education innovation the core of almost every education system in the world. The professor explained that students’ learning environment, learning tools and learning models have changed significantly, for example, various online methods were adopted which effectively broke through the limitations of time and space, even so, it’s believed that new form of teaching during the COVID-19 would not replace traditional instruction. During Q&A session of the lecture, a student asked about the impact and future development of U.S. professional schools beyond COVID-19, such as engineering schools. Pro. Yan answered the questions in terms of employment, tuition fees, and the nature of the discipline, considering the different social backgrounds in China and the United States. Other students asked some more questions about based on the lecture, and Professor Yan patiently answered them respectively.

All the lectures in the program will be delivered in English, from a variety of perspectives and countries of study. More educational propositions of present and future concern in different countries from different dimensions are coming to meet us.

Edited by LU Ke, LIU Tianze, XIA Jingyan

 Photo taken by LU Ke