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.