On March 16, China Education Daily made a special report on our university’s ideological and political teaching reform which aims at cultivating students’ morality. Among which, the MOOC “Zhuangzi's Fables and Their Wisdom”, led by Zhou Pingdi, associate professor of School of Foreign Languages, was widely discussed and praised.
MOOC“Zhuangzi's Fables and Their Wisdom”
This was another general education open online course taught in English, well designed by course group after the national-level MOOC Culture and Music in English. Composed of three teachers Zhou Pingdi, Chen Yanyan and Ruan Xichun, the course group and domestic expert in Zhuangzi used plain English and animated videos embodying hundreds of Chinese paintings to present Zhuangzi, the most magnificent and wonderful masterpiece in the history of Chinese philosophy, and present the fables in it.
Teacher Zhou Pingdi talks with the expert in Zhuangzi
From January 13 to March 1, the course group made full use of the advantages of online teaching and created a good cloud learning community through a variety of online teaching activities, providing round-the-clock learning guidance for students. The rich and vivid course content and effective interaction between teachers and students have attracted more than 24,000 students from provinces and cities across China, ethnic minority areas and even overseas. Among them, more than 700 students in our university were offered virtual online credit courses for the third semester, enabling them to gain 2 credits during the epidemic and spend a meaningful winter vacation.
In order to bring better learning experience to students in the MOOC “Zhuangzi's Fables and Their Wisdom”, the course group used learning behavior data to master students' online learning dynamics and provided timely psychological counseling and learning assistance to students with anxiety. This not only increased students' engagement in the course and built a solid ideological line of defense to unite teachers and students against the epidemic with active learning, but also strengthened their cultural confidence and critical thinking skills.
This MOOC has been operating normally during the pandemic, and has been highly praised by students in the Feedback and Suggestions section of the course forum. Students said that the course has brought them knowledge and strength, and they firmly believed that they could fight the epidemic together with their wisdom and righteous ardour, and made their contributions to winning the battle against COVID-19.
