According to the general principle of “uninterrupted teaching and learning during shutdown” as proposed in the Guidelines on Carrying out Satisfactory Organization and Management of Online Teaching for Colleges and Universities during the Pandemic Outbreak Issued by the Covid-19 Control and Prevention Work Leading Group under the Ministry of Education (JGT (2020) No. 2), Chongqing University has made deliberate arrangement for online undergraduate teaching for the spring semester of 2020 during the pandemic outbreak and strengthened and completed the quality assurance system that highlights “enhanced training, emphasis on process and continuous improvement”, so as to ensure the online teaching goes on smoothly with satisfactory quality.
In order to allow teachers to get adapted to online teaching as soon as possible, the Teaching Affairs Office and the Teacher and Teaching Development Center have carried out a series of online teaching training and guiding activities. Totally 26 training courses have been delivered before reopening of the University. In addition, 26 original papers on online teaching and training guide have been published. More than 700 teachers from CQU exchanged and shared their ideas on online teaching in a number of platforms and private groups. The training courses titled “uninterrupted teaching and learning during shutdown-the way to deliver online education” have gained 9,100 views. In addition, the “2020 Spring Workshop on Teacher and Teaching Development” themed “organic integration of online and offline teaching before and after the pandemic outbreak” is open to all teachers across the country. By now, there are already 6,092 students and the total views have reached 292,215. In addition, the schools have organized for the teaching and research offices and teaching teams to improve and popularize the online teaching skills of teachers through encouraging mutual assistance and offering expert guide. After training, all teachers have now mastered the basic online teaching skills. Some teachers are even able to use different platforms to improve their teaching efficiency. This way, the online teaching is set to go without obstructions.
CQU attaches great importance to management of online teaching and is making efforts to strengthen quality monitoring. About two weeks after online teaching started, CQU organized the questionnaire survey on online teaching to identify problems encountered during the process. Totally 451 questionnaires were retrieved from teachers and 4,101 from students. In addition, the reports on online teaching submitted by 23 CQU schools were analyzed textually. Eventually, a comprehensive online teaching survey report has been formed. CQU carried out another questionnaire survey on online teaching quality halfway through the semester, and compared the results with the data obtained in the previous survey, in an effort to provide guide for planning of teaching integration in the future. During online teaching period, CQU also released the Notice on Carrying out Online Course Teaching Quality Inspection in the Second Semester of 2019-2020. According to the Notice, online teaching inspection that involves self-inspection by teachers, general inspection by schools and random inspection by university supervisors should be carried out on the university and school level. Forms of inspection include online class visit, and communication with teachers (including the teaching assistants) and students. The inspection focuses on utilization of teaching platforms, provision of teaching resources, use of teaching methods, teaching attitudes and skill levels of teachers, learning status of students and feedback. As of May 30, the general inspection by schools has covered 4,631 classes and 4,003 teachers. The comprehensive inspection, special inspection and key inspection carried out by university supervising group has covered 340 courses, involving 554 teachers, with 1,166 class visits.
Problems identified during inspection or reported by students are addressed separately by their categories. For general problems, teachers in the supervising group would directly talk with the course teachers to help them make improvement. For course teachers with poor teaching performance, the Teaching Affairs Office would send an official letter to their schools, which would then carry out fact check and talk with the involved course teachers. Appropriate measures would then be taken to help those teachers make improvement in a specified time limit, as a move to enhance teaching quality. The inspection results showed that the online undergraduate teaching of Chongqing University had been going in a good order. Teachers’ attitude and students’ learning status were both found to be satisfactory, and the overall teaching quality was high.
As for reopening of schools, CQU has issued the Notice on Arrangement for Transition of Undergraduate Teaching in the Second Semester of 2019-2020. According to the Notice, the teaching units should “diagnose and evaluate the learning effectiveness of students in the previous semester and carry out summarization of online teaching”, and “ask the course teachers to summarize the online teaching of the previous semester.” At present, in response to the Notice, the related departments of CQU, and the supervising groups of the school level and the university level are working with the course teachers to ensure a smooth transition between online and offline undergraduate teaching and summarizing the online teaching experience to make substantial corrections in teaching platform construction strengthening, online teaching resource enriching, online teaching management enhancement, online teaching efficiency improvement, improvement of online experimental teaching system and improvement of online teaching skills of teachers. This way, the undergraduate teaching quality of CQU will be constantly improved.
