During the second week of online teaching, the greetings and instruction from every teacher of the Department of Electronic Engineering continued to be converted into dense signals of "0" and "1", which will light up the computer screens of all students who are thousands of miles apart from each other. The epidemic is related to everyone, which also affects everyone's life. "The more difficulty time we have, the more important it is for use to unite as one, and this is China's logic that has been continuously verified by history and reality." During the special period when we fight against the epidemic, "online course", "keep learning during closure", "longest vacation" and " study at home" are taken, which is not only a challenge to every teacher and student, but also a special and precious memory for all of us. While China is fighting against the epidemic across the country, another "battlefield" was opened in the university campuses: Teachers and teaching assistants prepared lessons laboriously, especially the teachers and teaching assistants in charge of course testing, they should redesign the courses and compile the experimental guidance, and realize the online teaching of the experimental courses by means of shooting and making videos, making courseware, designing problems and discussions. Students could also give full play to their subjective initiative: Students organized online interviews with teachers, sent positive feedback on teaching progress, successively published a series of articles on online teaching feedback, such as the articles titled "Teachers are busy at online teaching with kindly influence on us" and "Fight against epidemic- in the first week upon opening of Department of Electronic Engineering". The students also spontaneously made their voices, wrote publicity articles and shot publicity videos to cheer up the students in Wuhan.
Photo 1: The video "Pray for China, Cheer up Wuhan|The Song ofWarm Springby Students of Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University" shot by the students was forwarded by Tsinghua University's official media, which inspires everyone to overcome the difficulties.
The overall work progress for the second week is summarized as follows:
I.Teaching overview
In the second week upon opening of school, the Department of Electronic Engineering opened 102 online courses, including the 59 undergraduate courses and 43 postgraduate courses, and the average daily number of online students reached more than 1,000 Based on the online teaching experience for the first week, as for the combination of live streaming methods to be selected, teachers gradually learnt to select the live streaming method of "Tencent Conference/zoom (shared screen voice) + Yu class (screen recording, text interaction, assignment courseware, online Q&A) + WeChat (contact under special circumstances). The overall teaching work is moving towards the right direction. Many teachers selected the methods of increasing break hours, setting school bells before and after class or other means to enable students to better participate in online teaching. Through the investigation, teachers and students generally reflected that the teaching progress is smoother compared with the first time, and the interaction between teachers and the students also become frequently. Teachers also gradually accepted the feedbacks sent by the students last week, such as wearing headphones in teaching which can get better noise suppression effect. The students behaved more enthusiastically when interacting with each other, some of them even used online platforms to discuss after class or participated in "online classes" as external students. For example, many external students participated in Teacher Zhang Xudong's courseMachine Learningand Teacher Li Maokun's courseTheory and Method of Inverse Electromagnetic Problem.
Overly speaking, the online teaching effect of our department is good, the students were very enthusiastic in taking class, and the teaching assistants were also dedicated to the teaching, cooperated with teachers to prepare courses, organized classroom interactions, group discussions and classroom feedbacks, etc. In the second week upon opening of school, teachers and students in our department have gradually adapted to online teaching mode, and as a result, the overall teaching quality has been further improved.
II.Warm stories in the course of teaching
Through two weeks of online teaching, there are many interesting and moving stories that have taken place during and after the class:
Many teachers mentioned their preparations for online teaching during interviews, which deeply moved the students. For example, Teacher Wang Guijin specially prepared two laptops for the course ofDigital Image Processing: The main laptop (mainly used for recording and live streaming) and the standby laptop (mainly used for WeChat interaction and emergency contact) are respectively equipped with different wireless networks (Wifi and mobile's wifi ); Wang Mian, a teaching assistant for the courseElectromagnetic Fields and Waves, conducted a total of four online tests before deciding to use ZOOM software, with each of test lasting for more than one hour, which is jointly determined with Teacher Zhang Zhijun. Experimental courses are easier to be affected by online teaching forms. Considering the problem that the installation package of simulation software Vivado is too large which may cause difficulties in downloading and installing, Teacher Sun Yinan and his teaching assistant team have specially simplified the compression package of the software so that students can download it properly.
Photo 2: Teacher Wang Yu's courseDigital Logic and Processor Foundationare taught through multiple platforms, and he has prepared sufficient contingency plans in case of various possible situations.
Meanwhile, the teachers are also trying their best to give full play to the advantages of online teaching, strive to make the online class more lively and vivid. For example, while teaching the courseProbability Theory and Random Process, Teacher Zhang Hao creatively took use of the Kuaishou live streaming platform to give lessons to the students. "The teacher is also the live streamer", and the students would lighten "love" one by one in the chat box in the lower right corner and actively "offer gifts and leave bullet screen comments" for him.
Photo 3: Teacher Zhang Hao taught the course ofProbability Theory and Stochastic Processon Kuaishou live streaming platform
Teacher Gu Yuantao would make compliment when he saw some good answers and questions in the bullet screen while teaching the course ofSignals and Systems: "Very good! Very good!" "When playing a piece of audio about multiplication of two signals in class, the audio signal may be filtered out by Teacher Gu's microphone filter, so the audio cannot be transmitted to the ears of the students at the other side of the system," this is how students described the interesting things in class, "everyone has learned a lot while having the fun."
Photo 4: Excellent interaction of students while taking Teacher Gu Yuantao's courseSignal and System
In addition, some teachers gave the red envelopes to students to encourage them to actively answer questions in Yu class. Some teachers even bought lighting source for live streaming; to maintain a quiet live streaming environment, some teachers had to come to the office early at 8 o'clock to prepare for the class... so that the class started as scheduled by using the online teaching mode. Make joint efforts to win the fight against the epidemic with a mixture of joy and affection, it becomes the main theme of online teaching upon the opening of the school.
III.Feedbacks from teachers and students
According to the feedbacks, the main problems are mainly about equipment and network anomaly. For example, the problems of black screen, connection failure, laser pointer failure, etc., basically no negative problems in curriculum teaching occurred, so it can be seen that the feedbacks from students and the experience shared by teachers in the first week have played a good effect, and teachers and students are gradually adapting to such new mode of online teaching.
Under the coordination of the teaching work leadership group of our department, the department's leaders attended all the online courses in a full coverage manner in the first week. This week, the Teaching Office collected and summarized relevant experiences and suggestions, and collated relevant materials for the purpose of summarization and exchange at the following teaching seminar and youth forum.
On the other hand, the Student Working Group of the Youth League Committee of the department also interviewed teachers in charge of online teaching who all enthusiastically received the interview and answered each question in details. During such teaching interviews, students generally expressed their gratitude to the teachers and teaching assistants for their hard work and dedication. Teachers also shared many impressive stories about online teaching with students. Almost every teacher interviewed by students mentioned that when the class was over, the students would make comments through bullet screen such as "thank you for hard work" and "thank you, teacher". After seeing this, the teachers felt very touched, as when at traditional classroom, the teachers would say "thank you" to the students when the class was over, but most of the students would feel too embarrassed to say "thank you" to the teachers. Besides, many teachers mentioned that the students seemed to be active in asking questions and leaving comments during the discussion, and such questions and comments are quite profound. So as an old saying goes "a blessing in disguise", it, to some extent, strengthens the understanding and communication between teachers and students.
Photo 5: Screenshots of teacher Li Guolin's online teaching interview outline and his replies
Considering the online teaching situation in the second week upon opening of school, the teachers and students of the Department of Electronic Engineering insisted on implementing the daily reporting system, actively filled in the teaching log, reported the teaching situation and summarized relevant experiences. The department's Teaching Office will continue to pay close attention to the teaching process, continuously follow up and feedback the teaching situation in a timely manner. All teachers and students will try their best to carry out normal teaching work. Many provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities reported zero increase in Covid-19 cases starting from this week. We firmly believe that the epidemic will eventually end, and hope lies ahead. Hoping that when warm spring comes, we can meet with each other in beautiful Tsinghua campus as soon as possible.
