2020-02-26 [Online Classes in Progress] Small Screens, Bridge of Love: A Documentary Account of the College English Department’s Online Teaching Preparations. 

On February 3, 2020, the tenth day of the Lunar New Year, when people would typically still be enjoying their holiday, the course group leaders of ten courses from the College English Department gathered in a WeChat group due to the epidemic situation. Following the deployment of online teaching arrangements for undergraduates during the epidemic prevention and control period, they held an online teaching meeting to plan and formulate contingency teaching plans for the delayed semester opening, as well as to discuss how to conduct teaching through online platforms. The teaching plans specified each session for weeks 1-4, ensuring seamless connection with in-person classroom teaching once classes resumed. Each course group underwent three rounds of discussions and revisions. Under the guidance of Professor Yang Ruodong, Vice Dean for Teaching, they developed contingency teaching plans for all ten courses in response to the delayed semester opening. The ten courses involve as many as 16 student textbooks, each accompanied by a corresponding teacher’s edition. Since most students did not bring their textbooks home, online teaching faced a significant challenge. To address this issue, the College English Department contacted various publishers, including Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, Higher Education Press, and Beijing Jiaotong University Press. After communication, these publishers provided PDF versions of the textbooks. Teacher Zhao Dongmei, the head of the teaching and research section, divided the student textbooks into units, allowing instructors to distribute one unit at a time to students, ensuring optimal teaching effectiveness. Additionally, with the corresponding learning platforms from Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press—U Campus and WeLearn—students can utilize fragmented time for listening practice as well as reading and writing courses. This semester, over 80 classes are offered by 33 teachers from the College English Department, teaching more than 3,000 students. About one-third of these classes are newly added courses, meaning teachers face unfamiliar students. How to gather these students into unified communication groups became a challenge the instructors had to solve. Teachers employed various methods: emailing students according to their student ID numbers, posting course notifications on the university’s course platform, seeking assistance from other teachers in the course groups, asking classmates to help connect with peers, and requesting support from various schools to locate students. Now, all students have been successfully contacted and have joined WeChat groups or QQ groups created by their respective instructors. To ensure every student was reached, Teacher Zhang Jianqun implemented a four-level contact system: before the class began, group leaders contacted each member, class representatives verified with group leaders, and teachers followed up one by one with class representatives—ensuring no one was left behind. The next challenge to address was selecting a platform for live-streamed teaching. In addition to utilizing previously used apps and already launched MOOC courses such as College English Vocabulary, Business English, Advanced Comprehensive English, and Intermediate Comprehensive English, teachers from the College English Department actively experimented with live course delivery. They enthusiastically participated in several training sessions organized by the university’s Teaching Development Center, including instruction on teaching with MOOC+SPOC, Rain Classroom, the university course platform, Tencent Meeting operations, Tencent Classroom Quick Edition, and WeChat live streaming. After the training, with the assistance of Teacher Dong Lexian from the college’s academic affairs office, the teachers joined relevant WeChat discussion groups to address potential issues during live streaming. Through exchanges and communication with other faculty across the university, humanities-focused teachers transformed from technical novices into capable users. Several teachers from the College English Department are still on academic visits abroad, yet they overcame time zone differences to actively participate in various training sessions and discussions, fully engaging in the preparations for online teaching. The preparations before teaching were meticulous and thorough. After finalizing the teaching plans for the epidemic prevention and control period, the teachers proactively communicated with students, encouraged them to install the necessary software, and distributed pre-class materials across various online platforms. It became routine to work with two computers simultaneously, and burning the midnight oil turned into a common practice. During the preparation process, despite the large number of teaching faculty in the College English Department, the arrangements and organization proceeded in an orderly manner. Each step was implemented level by level through the department-teaching and research office-course group-instructor structure. Prior to the start of classes, on February 20, Teacher Zuo Yingjuan, Deputy Director of the College English Department, chaired an online video conference on the preparations for network teaching. The conference confirmed the teaching procedures, allowed for the exchange of experiences and issues, and emphasized the requirements set by both the university and the college. On February 25, the new semester’s College Public English courses officially commenced. For online teaching, the faculty of the College English Department are fully prepared. Ready, go! (Provided by the College English Department)