Professor Yu Xie Recognized the Value of the AICFE’s Online and Offline Teaching Services
On the morning of March 21, Professor Xie Yu, Member of the Academic Advisory Board of Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education (AICFE) visited the AICFE. Professor Xie discussed how to conduct research on the development of education for K-12 teachers and students in Beijing with AICFE, and the theme is "Education Public Service". Professor Xie is a professor at Princeton University, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow, and the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellow. He is a prestigious Chinese sociologist. His engagement has brought the lens of sociologists rather than educators. Attendees of the meeting included: Post doctor Wangyang Li from China Academy Social Management/School of Sociology, Beijing Normal University; Director Ling Chen and Ms. Xiaoshan Guo of the Integrated Application Laboratory of AICFE; Dr. Wei Cui of Learning Science Laboratory; Ms. Jiachen Song from International Cooperation Office.
Director Chen shared “Online and Offline Teaching Services (OOTS)” as one specific case of innovative education public service model. The first phase of the project started in December 2016 and ended in January 2017. OOTS is assigned by Beijing Municipal Committee of Education. It is also named "Beijing Secondary School Teachers Open Online Tutoring Project" and conducted in Tongzhou District, Beijing. It gathered human resources of experienced teachers in Beijing to Smart Learning Partner (SLP)—an education public service platform, to provide free and high-quality online tutoring services. So far more than 20,000 times of tutoring were realized. Through “Internet +”, OOTS gives another option for students to access to good teachers and teaching resources instead of going to top ranking secondary schools. OOTS aims to solve the problem of education quality and equality. Since students from different social and economic status, with different cultural heritage and background knowledge have equal access to experienced teacher online who teach students one-on-one based on questions asked by students, OOTS kindly narrow the gap between the rich and the poor in Education.
Professor Xie stated that the application of OOST is significant for students, especially those with low-income families and have limited access to high quality teaching resources. Teachers and students are highly engaged in OOST according to current data of OOTS. The OOTS platform now brings information including students' scores, personal traits and family background information, which will be crucial to explore the impact of family, peers, schools, and teachers on students’ learning. Findings of this question will be valuable for sociology of education, cyber sociology, social stratification . Regarding to the research direction of OOTS, Professor Xie suggested that comparative study and follow-up survey should be applied to assess the long-term impact of online teaching services on the students, and explore factors affected students’ preference further, such as whether air quality impacts students’ achievement. SLP and OOTS can generate student’s personalized reports and the group of students report. Professor Xie Yu believed that while OOTS goes further and deeper, group report would reflect something in common in a certain region or school, so we could make recommendations or take reactions to some specific educational or social problems. Both sides can work together on potential study and cooperation to benefit more students and families.
