On the morning of 21 September, the expert workshops of the College of Film at the Shanghai Theatre Academy successfully kicked off at the Shanghai Ximalaya Headquarters and the Shanghai Theatre Academy Changlin Road Campus. Mr Jin Wei, a famous host of SMG’s Dragon TV and an artist-in-residence at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, and Ms He Jie, the chief host of SMG’s Integrated Media Centre and an artist-in-residence at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, combined theory and practice in the classroom and gave a wonderful "first lesson" to the students of hosting major.
Although it was the first lesson and the first time for the Class of 2022 students to attend an expert workshop, they did not let up. At the Foxi Academy, the students took up the theme "How to Design Content for New Media Communication" and enthusiastically expressed their emotions, arguments and unique feelings on the podium. At the Ximalaya Headquarters located in the Pudong New Area, students were guided by Mr Jin Wei and Mr Zuo Yu to learn about the development of Ximalaya since its establishment, experience a series of interesting activities such as listening to books by QR code scanning and recitation booths, and participate in the roundtable and ask questions. The Class of 2021 students performed steadily and the Class of 2022 students did not shy away from the field, and the two teachers spoke highly of the students’ performances.
On the evening of 27 September, Jiang Changjian, PhD in political science and associate professor from the Fudan University and artist-in-residence at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, and the Class of 2023 master's students of the hosting major from the College of Film at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, conducted their first expert workshop in this semester in Classroom 202 in the Red Building on the Huashan Road Campus.
In the workshop, Mr Jiang first raised the question of "How Do We Know the World?" and used it as the way-in to analyze the limitations of distance, ability and prejudice in the process of knowing the world, which led the students to think from the individual to the times, from the micro to the macro by way of seeing the big picture by looking at the small picture. Then it came to the core of the workshop: what role does and should the hosts play in the process of people understanding the world? In the Q&A session and the discussion with the students, Mr Jiang analyzed the role of the hosts in the world of information disparity and what they can do in the different dimensions of the objective world, the false world and the virtual world. In this regard, Mr Jiang stressed that the hosts should always have a sense of "we" rather than a sense of "I" being an individual.
During the workshop, the teacher also discussed some of the challenges with the students. These included the following challenges that hosts need to overcome next, such as：
1. The spatial distance between the hosts and the audience;
2. The cultural quality and spiritual cultivation of the hosts;
3. The spiritual resonance with the audience;
4. Sufficient cross-border work experience that is required;
5. Affinity development.
