“Presenters are chosen from key universities all over China. In its initial, it is necessary for TVUs to adopt textbooks used in conventional universities and to choose academics with a sound university teaching back-ground as presenters, so that a high standard of tuition can be guaranteed. These two measures have proved to be effective.”
Whilst a solid academic background it can be assumed will mean that the presenter has a sound knowledge of their topic, and “knows their stuff”, as it were, does this necessarily justify the numbers of students to whom the lectures are transmitted to given the lack of interactivity, students aren't really able to engage more powerfully with the information which is being presented to them.
I would suggest that although there are opportunities for teachers and students to meet face to face, to ask questions and to have homework marked, in this case as there is a lack of people who are able to actually teach, and there seemed to be a rush to educate people in order to have a thriving economy, using TVU seemed like a perfect way to solve this problem in a temporary way until more individuals who were able to teach others came out the other side of the system.
Whilst I do not personally think that having one person teach masses of people is at all ideal, in the way in which ideologies are encouraged through institutions, the way in which China had dealt with it, for example by providing that face-to-face tuition that the televised lectures lacked, overcome many of the instant problems of it, and therefore allowed education to continue, in circumstances where is possibly would have not.
Zhao Yuhui, China: Its Distance Higher-Education System, http://www1.worldbank.org/disted/Technology/broadcast/tv-02.html [Accessed 05/03/09]
An intelligently critical post.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what about the previous unit concerns, how do they relate to the Chinese experience? CsofP? remediation? media literacy? etc?
Use the unit as the context for the new material you encounter.