In order to cope with the Covid-19 situation, strengthen prevention and control measures, and ensure the safety of students and teachers, the China-EU School of Law (CESL) started online teaching on February 24. The transition to online teaching has been carried out smoothly. In the Spring Semester of 2020, CESL has offered 8 online courses in Chinese law.
Chinese professors at CESL are using platforms such as Xue Xi Tong, WeChat, Tencent Meeting and Tencent Classroom to accomplish the virtual learning. The Law School arranges teaching assistants for each course, establishes a WeChat group for the course, and releases relevant notices and materials in advance. The WeChat group has also become a platform for teachers and students to discuss and answer questions.
Professor Xu Jiusheng, who teaches the "Symposium on Criminal Law", made careful preparations before the classes began. Professor Xu believes that the results from recording lectures is better than that of live broadcasting. Students can listen to the class freely in their own time, they can stop the video to think and take notes, and they can re-play certain parts if things are not clear. Therefore, Prof. Xu chose to teach by way of recording his course. Compared with younger teachers, Prof. Xu rarely has access to technology platforms, but in order to ensure the progress of student’s learning, he worked hard to familiarise himself with online teaching methods. He successfully recorded and uploaded his course materials to the learning channels for students to access. In addition, taking into account the nature of the China-EU School of Law, Prof. Xu also specifically prepared relevant content from German Criminal Law. His meticulous lectures are of great value to the students.
In terms of classroom interaction, the instructors are also actively looking for ways to encourage students to participate in classroom discussions. Professor Zhang Qing used the Tencent Conference to teach the course of "Market and Government Regulation." Even though the student’s cameras are not turned on in the classroom, it is organised to enable student’s oral participation in the class. Over the first five weeks of class, most students have been actively speaking and discussing, interacting with teachers and other students, and sharing learning materials in their WeChat group after class. Prof. Zhang encourages everyone to discuss through their microphones to try and stimulate the scenario of an offline class discussion, so that students can be fully immersed in the classroom during class time. Professor Shi Xiaoli also used the method of live discussion in the Tencent Conference to teach the course of "International Economic Law". At the same time, a Dingding Group was established as a platform for exchange and information sharing after class. The Professor leads the basic direction of the discussion content; the students divide the discussion content into groups. Not only do they carefully prepare materials before the class, and actively share ideas after the class, but they enthusiastically participate in the discussions during the class to achieve more ideal learning outcomes.
Market and Government Supervision Class
In order to cope with the problem of excessive usage of platforms such as Xue Xi Tong and the possibility of the system crashing during peak hours, after testing the equipment, Professor Yin Zhiqiang finally decided to use "Tencent Classroom" as the teaching platform for his "Tort Law" course. Prof. Yin sent the course link to the WeChat group before the class to ensure that everyone can participate in the classroom effectively at the beginning of the course. After entering the classroom, the students actively communicated with Prof. Yin. In the classroom, Prof. Yin actively adjusted the class status, made full use of "visualization" and "intuitive communication" of online teaching, and started teaching with the combination of "legal basic knowledge + case analysis teaching method". Although the technology platform is rarely used and the network teaching mode is significantly different from face-to-face teaching, the professors and students quickly overcome any challenges. They all adapted to the new teaching environment and methods. Thanks to the many debuggings made by Prof. Yin on the Tencent Classroom platform in the early stages, the entire course was basically carried out without network issues, ensuring that all students could learn without difficulties.
Tort Law Class
Online teaching is a new challenge for many schools, colleges, teachers and students around the world. At CESL it has been going very well so far and the Law School will continue to provide more support for online teaching going forward.
