Over 200 million students being taught online in China during COVID-19: Will online teaching become the routine model in medical education?

摘要

In December 2019, COVID-19 hit Wuhan city and soon spread to other provinces in China and other countries, halting a series of normal social and economic activities. 1 To prevent gathering and reserve the normal teaching and learning process, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in China demanded that courses should be taught online in late January. China has the largest population of students in the world, with more than 200 000 000 primary and middle school students and more than 30 000 000 university students. Meanwhile, with the escalating situation, more countries start to replace classroom education with online courses without direct contact. 2 Therefore, we maybe are having the largest number of students ever to study online for such a long time in the world. Through our experience, online courses do provide several benefits. First of all, it helps cultivate students’ ability of self-learning and resource researching, so that students may feel easier when entering post-graduate study period. Meanwhile, the quality of on- line courses is even better than face-to-face classes because teach- ers tend to spend more time and efforts. In addition, with related resources saved directly online, it is be possible for students to re- view the knowledge whenever they get troubled. Furthermore, with the help of live-broadcasting platforms, the interaction be- tween teachers and students becomes more in-depth, especially the accessible the ask-answer part despite geographical distance.