28 February 2020
Recently, according to the relevant notices and requirements of the Higher Education Department of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, the Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA) actively organized teachers and students to carry out online teaching trials and pressure tests.
Select high quality online teaching platforms according to the actual situation of the courses
As an art university, most of STA’s courses are practical courses and are delivered with the face-to-face small class teaching mode, and as such it is difficult to carry out online teaching. To this end, the leaders of STA have held many special meetings with the heads of various colleges and departments to assign online teaching tasks, prepare contingency plans and strengthen quality control.
According to the unified arrangement of the school, the teachers of each college/department have chosen their preferred online teaching platform, and finally high-quality online platforms and online teaching software have been chosen for the online teaching of all undergraduate courses of STA.
Organize online teaching trials to ensure teaching quality
STA has promulgated the “Notice of Shanghai Theatre Academy on the Organization and Management of Online Teaching during the Epidemic Period”, and issued the “Tips for Teaching Work”, requiring that before 26 February, every teacher should be familiar with the online teaching software of his/her choice, every student should know how to use the teaching software involved, and the preparation and uploading of lessons for the first two weeks of each course should be completed. Teachers and students should ensure that they carry out interactive online teaching testing.
As of 26 February, all colleges and departments have conducted interactive testing through various teaching platforms.
Carry out online teaching pressure tests to ensure stable performance
In order to have as many courses online as possible at the same time during the same period, STA has organized teachers and students of various colleges and departments to conduct the pressure testing so as to test the stability of the platforms. According to the pressure testing feedback from each college/department, basically there has been no stucking in the delivery of the courses, and the overall operation have been relatively stable.
Actively implement relevant countermeasures and contingency plans
Taking into a variety of technical problems and may occur in the online teaching process into due consideration, STA has actively implemented the relevant countermeasures and comprehensive contingency plans, mainly including: actively communicating with the third-party platforms for good technical support; putting in place a backup online teaching plan for each course; having the Wechat groups as the guaranteed means of teaching; making synchronous video recording of the live online teaching so that students can playback and watch the video for their study; encouraging the provision of reading and observation resources such as the list of books and list of plays to enhance students' ability of independent learning.
Through the overall coordination of the academic affairs office and various functional departments and the active cooperation and participation of teachers and students of various colleges and departments, it is believed that STA’s online courses will be carried out smoothly, ensuring that the “Classroom in the Air” covers all colleges and departments, all majors and all courses.
