China's Formal Online Education under COVID-19: Actions from Government, Schools, Enterprises, and Families

This book investigates how schools, enterprises and families in China have coped with the formal online education in the light of government policy throughout the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak, with special focus on the problems they have encountered and possible solutions.

Using grounded theory, over 1000 posts retrieved from public online forums were analyzed under a 4*4 framework, referring to four special time nodes (proposal period, exploratory period, full deployed period, exiting period) and four major subjects (government, schools, enterprises, families). The book identifies four main issues faced by massive online education during the epidemic: platform selection in proposal period, teacher training in exploratory period, resource integration in full deployed period, and flexibility of returning to schools in exiting period. These findings enlighten us with a deeper understanding of the process of online learning in an educational emergency, helping to develop best countermeasures in similar situations, as well as to provide paths to follow for other countries.

The book will appeal to teachers, researchers and school administrators of the online education and education emergency management, as well as those who are interested in Chinese education during the COVID-19 outbreak in general.

Zehui Zhan is a professor and Doctoral supervisor in South China Normal University. She is the Youth Pearl River Scholar, Hong Kong Scholar, and PI of the smart educational equipment industry-university-research cooperation base. She has published more than 50 papers and two textbooks in the field, and got other honors such as the annual award of youth excellent universities teacher from Fok Yingdong Education Foundation and the Ministry of Education in China, the title of best teachers achieving highest teaching quality, and the first prize of national education software competition. Her major research interests include STEM education and learning science.

Liming Huo is a postgraduate student whose research interests are STEAM Education, Programming Education, and Smart Education, from School of Information Technology in Education, South China Normal University, and also a teacher at Xiguan Guangya Experimental School, Liwan District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.

Xiao Yao is a second-year postgraduate student whose research interests are STEAM Education, Artificial Intelligence Education, and Smart Education, from School of Information Technology in Education, South China Normal University.

Baichang Zhong is the outstanding professor from School of Information Technology in Education at South China Normal University, China. Dr. Zhong has published over 160 academic papers in major Chinese and International journals indexed by CSSCI and SSCI in the field of educational technology. He received the 5th National Excellent Supervisor of M.Ed. in China in 2016. His major research interests include robotics education, STEM education, and online education in K‐12.