Living beyond the moment

Will e-learning fulfill its potential in post-coronavirus China?

With the novel coronavirus disrupting lives across China and forcing schools to suspend classes, there has been a massive pivot toward online education as a solution to ensure the continuity of study for millions of students who are effectively in self-quarantine at home.

The Ministry of Education launched a national internet cloud classroom on Feb 17, and we have seen a sudden convergence of national and institutional policy, combining with the existence of homegrown EdTech, which has accelerated online adoption to numbers approaching 100 percent within a month.

Zhejiang University, one of the country's leading public institutions with enrollment of over 54,000 students, opened its spring semester according to plan, but with all classes being offered digitally through its online platform, which was launched in August 2016, and now houses 5,105 courses for its students in the spring 2020 semester.

On the first day of the semester, total visits exceeded 1 million, and in a month, the number of registered students on the platform increased from 68,381 to 87,390, with 25,925 video views. The university is planning to massively expand its use of online courses over the next several months.

Distance learning has long roots in higher education, dating back to the correspondence courses of the 19th century. As communication technology advanced through the 20th century, connectivity became a source of competitive advantage and differentiation. The Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, headquartered in Monterrey, Mexico, became the first university in Latin America that connected to the internet in 1989, leveraging technology to create a Virtual University delivering courses across more than 30 campuses simultaneously.

With the continued evolution of technology and technology-enabled learning, the internet and open-source learning created the context for scale. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) became popular in 2012 with the emergence of structured providers including Coursera, EdX and Udacity. In the United States, 30 percent of all graduate students today study online and it is estimated that 33 percent of all higher education students will take at least one online course.

The global e-learning market is expected to double by 2025, reaching $331 billion. Growth in the market is coming from adoption of EdTech within individual institutions, credit recognition for MOOCs and increasing collaboration between degreegranting institutions and MOOC/online providers.

China is no stranger to online learning, with an estimated 200 million people enrolled in MOOCs, in 12,500 courses. Before the novel coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese e-learning market was expected to grow by 25 percent this year.

What is fueling the growth of e-learning in China? It does not appear to be an issue related to access. China is the largest higher education market in the world, having enrolled 45 million students in 2018 and the number of graduates in China is projected to continue growing up to 300 percent by 2030.

The answer may lie in the learning experience itself. Traditional pedagogy in China is based on passive learning and is typically delivered in large lecture halls with little interaction and lots of memorization. But like in many other societies, student generations in China are very comfortable with technology and with on-demand services, creating expectations for individual attention and autonomy that are not met in traditional high-volume education structures. E-learning represents an opportunity for students to have more personal learning experiences and to choose the subjects they wish to study.

Platforms such as XuetangX, CNMOOC and IMOOC make a variety of courses available to the public in China. At the same time, EdTech has brought improved learning outcomes through the integration of artificial intelligence and adaptive learning. Arguably, this technological shift is leading not only to greater choice of learning but to improved results.

In addition to learner demand, the skills gap is alive and well in China, partially due to the slow rate of change in Chinese universities. While access is not an issue, the relevance of learning for job skills is increasingly questioned. With this in mind, learners are looking to e-learning as a means to fill the gap. Technical skills, such as computer coding, data analytics and digital marketing, are increasingly in demand by employers, but they have not become prevalent in non-science domains. Learners are turning to e-learning and non-academic boot camps to fill this space with providers such as Le Wagon, 5Win and Uplooking.

MOOCs present an attractive menu of topics and skills that are in demand by employers and which are seen as necessary tools to succeed.

While the e-learning market has grown rapidly in China, it has not yet reached its full potential. Higher education is highly regulated in China, both in terms of institutional autonomy and degree requirements. As of today, there have not been any online degree programs in China and accepting online credit toward degrees is a gray zone. Because e-learning remains disconnected from higher education and degree pathways the perception of its value and impact is adversely affected.

So, the question today is, what will happen when things go back to normal and students are once again fully back on campus? Will this be a way forward for e-learning, an opportunity to demonstrate its impact and potential, or will we fall back to the comfort of traditional models and historic educational policy?

China has a great opportunity to expand its e-learning footprint. It has the market, scale and technological advantage. The novel coronavirus experience demonstrates how technology can provide solutions to crisis. It is the moment to allow innovation in education to flourish－learners across the country will benefit, as will academic institutions and the communities we serve. Over this decade we have seen China assume leadership in FinTech, let's see if the next decade will be Chinese leadership in EdTech.

The author is the vice-dean at the Zhejiang University International Business School. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.