News & Events
    Summary of Online Teaching Results in the Fourth Week of Department of Electronic Engineering (as of March 13, 2020)

    In the fourth week upon the formal opening of the school, after completing the normal online teaching tasks, the teachers and students from the Department of Electronic Engineering also actively responded to the call of the country and the school and made all necessary contributions to the fight against the epidemic.

    The students of the Department of Electronic Engineering got organized spontaneously to "record videos" at home and designed and performed the gesture dance "Never Give Up" to cheer Wuhan and China. The dance video was forwarded by official account of Tsinghua University with nearly 100,000 clicks.

    Photo 1: Postgraduate students of the Department of Electronic Engineering "record videos" at home to cheer Wuhan and pass positive energy. It gained extensive attention upon being forwarded by various media platforms.

    On March 8, Wang Yu, Chair of the Department of Electronic Engineering, visited the Admission Office of Tsinghua University and joined a live streaming on the Kuaishou platform to share a video lecture on the theme of "Electronic Information Makes People's Life Better" with all students who are preparing for the examination all over the country. The content is mainly about what is the professional core of electronic information and introducing this to students who are interested in electronic related industries. Why should we learn electronic information? In the AI era, what benefits can electronic information bring to our life, etc.

    Photo 2: Wang Yu showed live streaming screenshots related to the electronic information industry for the majority of students who are preparing for the examination.

    Teachers and students of Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University will persist in responding to the school's call of "share Tsinghua's curriculum resources and tale social responsibilities", actively give more support and assistance to other schools, especially those located in Wuhan, and make all necessary contributions to win the battle against the epidemic as soon as possible.

    The overall work progress for the fourth week is summarized as follows:

    I.Teaching overview

    In the fourth week upon opening of the school, 104 open classes are scheduled in the Department of Electronic Engineering, besides which, several experimental courses such asBasic Experiment of Physical Electronics,Basic Experiment of Digital Logic and Processor,Basic Experiment of Electronic Circuit and SystemandCommunication Circuit Experimentwill be opened. Teachers and assistants have chosen to record corresponding videos, redesign and make courseware, and build remotely-controlled measurement system etc. to ensure the smooth progress of students' experimental courses, which is quite a unique and smart teaching method.

    Photo 3: Demonstration screenshots of remotely-controlled measurement systems in LvHui and Ma Xiaohong’s course -Basic Experiment of Physical Electronics

    In terms of the operation of the course, some feedbacks on the Yu class this week are given as follows: For example, teacher Yang Jian's course -Fuzzy Mathematics and Its Applicationsfor postgraduate students was connected to the Hetang Yu class many times before 8 o'clock, but it all failed. It was only during the break hours before 8:50 that the class was connected successfully. For teacher Huang Yidong's course-Fundamentals of Solid-state Physics, live streaming documents of the Yu class were generated too slowly. The documents for last Tuesday's course were still not successfully generated by the weekend. Some other minor problems relating to the network still occur: In the courseStatistical Learning Methods and Signal and Information Processinggiven by teacher Zhang Weiqiang and Liu Jia, the Rohm Building's wireless network was interrupted, but due to switch to the mobile wifi in time during the break hours, this did not affect the normal teaching. In the Liu Yongpan's courseModern Computer Architecture, Song Jian's English courseSignal and Systemand Wang Jintao's courseCase Study of Communication Network Design, the problem of bad connection occurred, but after switching to mobile wifi or restart, the system will become normal.

    Photo 4: Huang Yidong explained the crystal structure in the course ofFundamentals of Solid-state Physics

    In addition, some teachers also recommended and adopted new teaching modes such as teaching test during break hours and classroom quiz. The students also maintained positive enthusiasm for class, and they all performed well in terms of the classroom interaction, group discussion and classroom feedback.

    II.Teaching interview

    This week, the students continued to have the online teaching interview with the teachers who offer the core courses of our department. Teacher Huang Yidong and Zhang Hao had in-depth discussions and exchanges with the students and actively answered their questions. Excerpts of interview are shown as follows:

    1.What kind of difficulties did you encounter in the process of preparing lessons and teaching?

    Teacher Huang Yidong: To solve the effect of delay of Yu class on PPT animation, mouse movement and bullet screen interaction, we have spent a lot of time and made various attempts, and finally the scheme of sharing Yu class screen through Zoom meeting is determined. Remote teaching is quite different from traditional classroom teaching. We need to understand the state of students when they are listening at any time and create a good interactive atmosphere so as to control the progress of lectures and adjust the content of courses, which is quite important to ensure the course quality. Due to the delay problem of Yu class, it causes the hysteresis of PPT animation, mouse indication, bullet screen, etc. Therefore, we adopted the scheme of sharing Yu class screen through Zoom meeting through repeated tests, which helps effectively eliminate the delay problem. Meanwhile, it allows us to log in to the Zoom meeting through the mobile phone, watch the text information sent by the students in Zoom chat box through the large screen, and reply by voice in a real time. During each class, the students will send about 150 messages, which show the efficient interaction effect. In addition, in order to prevent the live streaming problem with Yu class, we also recorded videos through screen recording function of Zoom and uploaded them to the online classroom.

    Comments by reporter: Teacher Huang also specially made the PPT of "Online Teaching Process".

    2.What kind of changes took place in the teaching process after you adopting the online teaching mode?(It may involve the type of platform you choose, changes in teaching links during the teaching, etc.)

    Teacher Zhang Hao: The Kuaishou live streaming platform is adopted by us. The reason why we adopt Kuaishou platform is very simple. Generally, we used to write on the blackboard, so audio and video need to be transmitted in real time. However, Yu class does not support real-time video transmission function well, while for various conference systems (Tencent, WeLink, Zoom), due to consumption of a large amount of bandwidth, it has deficiencies in stability. During the Spring Festival, Kuaishou live streaming platform users reached 100 million a day with tens of thousands of live streaming rooms. Therefore, our participation will not exert any pressure and therefore the stability will be guaranteed. This also can be proved by actual teaching effect.

    According to the characteristics of online courses, usually students are unable to concentrating on listening for more than half an hour. So we changed the teaching form from original two 45-minute sessions with a 10-minute break to three 30-minute sessions with a 5-minute break. After such change in specific time arrangement, the overall time of a major class is not changed, but it becomes more suitable for online teaching. The feedbacks from the students are good.

    3.Do you feel different during the online teaching process compared with the former teaching mode?

    Teacher Huang Yidong: We must speak to the camera without audience. At first, I felt very uncomfortable. But seeing the interactive information of the students, I could feel that they were following me, so I gradually get used to this mode.

    Teacher Zhang Hao: The biggest feeling is that it is quite different from normal classroom teaching mode as we need to motivate the passion of students in such an empty environment. I am trying my best to adapt to such change.

    4.Can you share some stories that impressed you during lesson preparation, during teaching or after class?

    Teacher Zhang Hao: The students who listen to the class online are not exactly the students who take this course as an elective course, some of them may include many alumni, other friends and partners. They put forward opinions and suggestions on the curriculum from different aspects, and all of these are quite very beneficial to the improvement of our curriculum. To tell you the truth, we cannot get such feedbacks under the normal teaching mode.

    At the end of the interview with Teacher Zhang Hao, he smiled and shared with students that: "The effect of online teaching is still different from traditional teaching after all. Hoping that the online teaching of the school will develop better and that the epidemic will end as soon as possible so that our students can return to the campus and start their new semester."

    I believe this is also the common voice of all teachers and students in Tsinghua University. The victory is about to come, and we are in the way of winning the war against epidemic.