Cjn.cn(长江网), Wuhan-based news website set by the government, reported that all primary and secondary schools including vocational schools in the city will offer online class from February 10th. The implementation plan has been announced yesterday by Wuhan Education Bureau as well.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus, a number of provincial and municipal education bureaus have issued documents to cancel large-scale training activities, which has crashed the track of offline education. Online teaching seems to be a transition path for institutions to stop loss in time. Driven by policy and consumer, this sector will usher in more market space. 

Specific implementation plan

All the primary and junior high schools in Wuhan:

8: 00 ~ 12: 00 Mon-Fri: online teaching via Wuhan Cloud Classroom(武汉教育云)

14:00 ~ 16:00 Mon-Fri: online Q&A

16:00 ~ 17:30 Mon-Fri: personalized tutoring

As for senior high schools, the details of teaching activities via Cloud Classroom are allowed to be arranged according to their own plan.

Reported by Cjn.cn, Wuhan Cloud Classroom provides live broadcast lecturing, online Q&A, on-demand review, homework writing, and examination services for teachers and students in all primary and secondary schools in Wuhan on the basis of cloud video technology.

Meanwhile, Wuhan Education Bureau has interpreted the functions of the Cloud Classroom from three aspects including course arrangements, teaching faculty and curriculum resources. 

Firstly, each district in Wuhan will release the course schedule via the platform, then the headteachers can issue a notice to all students in the class, guiding them to study online.

In terms of teaching faculty, education bureaus in all districts will coordinate the teachers at the compulsory education stage to conduct online collective lesson preparation, online teaching and personalized tutoring, while the senior high schools have more flexibility.

As for curriculum resources, Wuhan Education Bureau will make full use of the existing resources at Cloud Classroom then independently develop a number of high-quality courses and introduce resources from the top enterprises.

Coronavirus outbreak stimulates new opportunities in online teaching

As the epidemic continues to spread, the proposal of online teaching has been raised by more and more provincial and municipal education bureaus as an alternative to ensure the conduction of school education.

Earlier, the Education Bureau of Binzhou City, Shandong Province, issued the “Notice on the use of cloud platform to provide teaching services in Bingzhou’s primary and secondary schools”, mentioning that current curriculum resources are mainly newly recorded and students can study on-demand via computers or other devices. Plus, schools with better conditions are encouraged to carry out online interactive teaching.

On January 28th, Shenzhen Educational Information Technology Center issued the “Notice on the Collection of Online Teaching Solutions”, calling for plans from social enterprises in order to better organize students’ online learning amid the prolonged closure of schools. Candidate enterprises need to address the feature and charging standards of products in the chart and mark whether to provide video lessons, electronic teaching materials, and whether to support online live broadcasting, etc.

For offline tutoring institutions, canceling collective teaching activities by local education departments in order to prevent and control the Wuhan pneumonia epidemic has indeed disrupted their enrollment plan and teaching arrangement in the short term. But in the long run, this event will force offline institutions to enhance their awareness of online services. Meanwhile, driven by the promotion from education departments and schools, online education will be known and accepted by more and more parents and students, sparking a large market space for companies running business in this industry.