Due to the epidemic, the school issued an online teaching notice, the Department of Electronic Engineering actively responded to the call of the state and obeyed the unified instructions of the government. It also "took the Yu class software platform of Tsinghua University as the main platform, combined with massive open online course (MOOC) and other methods to carry out online teaching according to teaching schedule" based on the principle of "postpone the date of returning to school, carry out teaching work normally, give full play to advantages and guarantee quality" and in accordance with the requirements of theNotice on Adjusting the Teaching Program for the Spring Semester of 2019-2020, as well as formulated relevant work arrangements for online teaching for the Spring Semester of 2020. Before the opening of the school, the Party Committee of the department set up a leadership group for teaching during the epidemic prevention and control period held more than a dozen of online working meetings, carried out comprehensive online teaching work before the opening of the school based on the statistical analysis of the comprehensive situation of courses for spring semester for implementation layer by layer. The department's Teaching Office has issued notices such as Teaching Work Arrangement of Department of Electronic Engineering Engineering for the Spring Semester 2019-2020,A Letter to the Tutor of the Postgraduate Students of the Department of Electronic EngineeringandA Letter to the Postgraduate Students of the Department of Electronic Engineering, based on which, relevant teaching work can be arranged in advance. Daily reporting system is implemented since the opening of the school, teachers and students also actively filled in the teaching log, reported the teaching status and summarized relevant experiences. The overall work progress for the first week is summarized as follows:
I.Teaching overview
In the first week upon the opening of the school, the Department of Electronic Engineering opened 92 online classes, with a daily average of more than 1,000 online students participated. Among which, more than 300 students participated in the "MAP 1" class at the same time, while the courses ofDigital Logic and Processor Foundation,Electronic Circuit and System Foundation,Probability Theory and Stochastic Processetc. are all large courses with more than 200 students involved, which run well and gained good feedbacks from the students. On the 20thand 21stday, as teachers and students became more and more familiar with online teaching mode, many external students even attended the online course. The new mode of online teaching has provided more learning opportunities for students to make use of their spare time. Most of the teachers in charge of online teaching would adopt the form of Hetang Yu class (76.09%) + Tencent Conference (61.96%)/zoom (32.61%). Meanwhile, they would also flexibly use Kuaishou, WeChat group and other alternative means to achieve smooth communication at any time.
Considering the large variety and quantity of experimental courses for undergraduates of Department of Electronic Engineering, the course team discussed and revised the teaching program for many times, and made corresponding preparations and adjustments with respect to the online teaching mode. The method integrating the "pocket instrument + online simulation" and "online school + Yu class + WeChat group" is adopted so as to achieve online-to-offline experimental teaching in steps. Considering the situation that the students must finish tasks at home, the experimental instruction book was re-prepared, which contains the FAQ part for the problems that the students may raise, and the simulation experiment contents and thinking problems with clear results and that are convenient for the students to self-check and further strengthen the learning have been set up. The teaching demonstration experiment was also filmed, which allowed the students to observe and record the experimental phenomena according to the demonstration experiment so as to establish intuitive understanding. Students should complete basic simulation experiments at home and comprehensive system experiments after returning to school.
Overall speaking, the teachers interacted with the students in an orderly way through live streaming, bullet screen, Q&A, random call, in-class tests and other means and methods, and successfully performed their duties of teaching. The students' mental state during the class was quite positive, with the overall attendance rate of more than 99%. The teaching assistants are actively dedicated to teaching, cooperate with teachers for course arrangement, organized classroom interactions, group discussions and collected the feedback after class, etc. In the first week upon the opening of the school, the teachers and students of our department performed well and were able to actively and enthusiastically carry out online teaching.
Photo I: Real-time interaction between teachers and students
II.Teaching management and guarantee
A large number and a large variety of spring courses are available to the Department of Electronic Engineering, for which, 84 courses and 101 classrooms are set or provided, with more than 6,000 students and nearly 90 teachers involved. Before official launch of online teaching, the teaching work leadership group organized a special technical group to conduct a comprehensive test of various online teaching platforms and teaching modes. For all kinds of feedback problems during the test, such as connection failure, delay, picture & sound out of sync or other technical problems, the teaching working group took corresponding measures in a timely manner, and recommended the combination mode of online meetings + Yu class PPT etc. through Tencent/zoom upon testing, and made preparatory measures such as recorded broadcasting + classroom release, requiring that no less than two curriculum plans shall be prepared for each classroom. Several live streaming and recorded broadcasting classrooms are set and purchased teaching tools such as cameras, digital boards and headphones are purchased to ensure that all preparatory works for online teaching are made before the opening of school.
To facilitate timely communication, a WeChat group of over100 teachers for all courses and various joint working groups are established. All teachers are arranged or urged to participate in Yu class training for the spring semester, who can exchange experiences and feedbacks through WeChat group. Upon the end of the course, the teachers summarized their experiences and shared their feelings during formal online courses in time, shared their live streaming experiences and possible problems that may occur to the equipment, with the 100% feedback rate of the teachers. Students collected the feedbacks on various courses taken by them in a timely manner, with 100% courses covered. For the feedbacks such as bad connection during playing, multi-platform collaboration, teacher-student interaction, etc. from the teachers and classmates, the teaching work group is working with technicians to find a perfect solution.
To further guarantee the quality of online teaching, the Department of Electronic Engineering increased the ratio of teaching assistants to ensure that the ratio of student to teaching assistants for core basic courses is not greater than 40:1, and formulated several plan on how to improve the role of teaching assistants in online teaching. When conditions permit, some classes will add new teaching links in which teaching assistants gave review classes, exercise classes and answered questions for small class through the conference platform. Also the department leaders, teaching work groups, teaching leaders of various research institutes, teachers in charge of educational affairs, teaching assistants, etc. performed their respective duties, paid close attention to the teaching situation in the Yu class in a real time, recorded the attendance of students, and found the reasons for the absence of students.
Leaders of the department also attended online class under the unified arrangement of the department, with a coverage rate of 100%. The Teaching Office has developed an online course information real-time reporting system so that everyone can master the operation of each course. Through measures taken by the students such as holding online class meetings, developing WeChat applets and online questionnaires, the problems of difficulties in organizing classes in large classes, improving interactive effects, attending classes for poor students and foreign students, and information collection and statistics were effectively solved.
Generally speaking, the teaching work is generally under smooth progress, and teachers and students have successfully overcome some difficulties encountered in online teaching by means of combining advantages of multiple platforms. We believe that with the joint efforts of all teachers and students, the Department of Electronic Engineering would surely complete its duties in online teaching smoothly and steadily during the special period when China is fighting against epidemic.
III.Feedbacks from teachers and students
Upon the request of teaching work leadership group of the department, teachers should fill in the "Teaching Feedback Form" in time after end of each online teaching session, and should also track and send students’ feedbacks through various channels, such as conducting a comprehensive questionnaire survey among students through the student system.
Judging from the overall situation of the courses taken by teachers and students, the students showed positive attitude towards Tencent Conference’s sharing screen + voice live streaming in Yu class. The method of sharing Yu class screen through online meeting showed a better effect, which is convenient for more rich interactions between teachers and students. By adopting such combination method, the students can interrupt the class, and makes full use of chat box functions to realize classroom interaction. Students are enthusiastic and active in bullet screen interaction and homework interaction. Teaching assistants will assist the teachers in communicating with students in WeChat group, which can effectively relieve the boring emotion of the students as they need to watch the screen all the time in class.
For the feedbacks of teachers in terms of teaching experience, some common problems can be summarized, such as unstable connection, delay in Yu class, short pause, display of fold-over etc., and aiming at these problems, the teachers can learn from each other and propose to combine the advantages of various platforms, such as PPT sharing in Yu class, Tencent Conference/zoom voice live streaming, WeChat group interaction and other multi-platform integration means, so as to achieve better teaching effect as much as possible under the condition of bandwidth and resources are limited to some extent. In case of absenteeism during online course, the reasons can be roughly summarized as follows: drop out and jet lag. For the students suffering from jet lag, teachers offered recorded video which can be played back in Yu class and uploaded to online school.
Photo 2: The teacher wrote online for explanation
The feedbacks from the students are mainly some detailed problems. For example, the PPT cursor used in teaching is not obvious to see. It is suggested to use the marker pen function of PPT, which enables you to mark the key points. The screens of the Yu class at mobile phone side and computer side are both small, which makes it inconvenient to submit homework. Therefore, it is recommended to submit homework through the online school. The problem of delay or instability may occur during teaching through Tencent Conference. The teacher's responder and bonus system for answering questions would be affected. It is suggested to adjust the responder and bonus system for answering questions etc… The Teaching Office contacted the course teachers in time to solve the problem and replied their questions one by one.
In general, considering the online teaching in the first week upon opening of the school, the Teaching Office of the department paid close attention to the teaching process, listened to the teachers' online teaching condition, and timely received feedback from teachers and students. The benchmark courses are also promoted throughout the department to try to improve the quality of online teaching. The Office of Academic Affairs of the Department of Electronic Engineering will continue to track and collect feedbacks on teaching in a timely manner, make persistent efforts, and work together with all teachers and students of the department to ensure that teaching work can be carried out smoothly during the epidemic.
