Venture into the educational unknown as virus spreads

Editor's Note:

For the majority of students in China, the beginning of the year 2020 has marked the adoption of a brand-new learning experience which relies on "virtual classrooms" and teaching apps.

Likewise, the threat of COVID-19 has also reshaped the traditional way of teaching for school teachers, posing unprecedented challenges as well as novel opportunities.

Rick Dunham, an international professor at Tsinghua University, shares stories on distance teaching to his class of students spread out over 22 time zones.

See how he has tried to "make something sweet" at a time "when the world has given us lemons".

For the past seven years, I have had the honor to teach some of the smartest graduate students from around the world at China's top university, Tsinghua. Our Global Business Journalism program faculty takes pride in the high-level classroom interaction and individual attention we give our students.

That's one of the major reasons I was a bit anxious when it became clear in late January that we were going to have to shift our spring semester at the Tsinghua School of Journalism and Communication to "virtual classrooms". The rapid spread of the coronavirus made online learning the only way we could serve our students. But I quickly realized that this unprecedented challenge could be turned into an opportunity to experiment, to innovate and to provide an even more rewarding educational experience for all of us.

I could see our online future approaching even before government officials announced the closure of schools across China. International flights to China were canceled, stranding nearly all of our Global Business Journalism program's international students in their home countries, spread over five continents. With spring semester classes scheduled to begin on Feb 17, we were committed to finding a way to offer our students the chance to continue their education in new and exciting ways. Tsinghua University's visionary leadership had the same idea and aggressively pursued solutions.

Our biggest challenge was logistical. Global Business Journalism students are spread out over 22 time zones. It was almost impossible to find a class time that would work for everyone. For my advanced news writing course, we settled on 8 am in Washington, which was 2 pm for students in France and Spain, 3 pm in South Africa, 5 pm in Oman, 9 pm in China, and 10 pm in Japan and Korea. Thank goodness Global Business Journalism students are flexible and adventurous.