BECE. Newsletter 

Vol.8, No.1, 2021 1061 

 

 

 

 

The Situation of “School’s Out, But Class’s On” un-

der the Epidemic 

By Wang J., Wei Y., & Zong M. 
Correspondence to: Wang J., School of Educational Information Technology, 

Central China Normal University, China. Email: wjxin@mail.ccnu.edu.cn 

ONFRONTED with the COVID-19 outbreak, online education has be-

come the main way of teaching at all kinds of schools since the Ministry 

of Education of P. R. China proposed the “School’s Out, But Class’s On” 

policy. An empirical article published in China Educational Technology took 

59,156 primary and secondary school teachers in Hubei Province (the worst-

hit area of the epidemic), as research objects, analyzing their online teaching 

behaviors, teaching modes, and acceptability through questionnaire survey 

and interview. 

The research findings are as follows: 

In terms of teaching behavior and teaching mode: the smartphone has 

become the most commonly used teaching terminal for teachers. However, 

from the perspective of its functions, the function supporting the teaching 

process is slightly single, and the screen is too small, which will affect the ef-

fect of teachers’ online teaching. 

In terms of the use of teaching resources, teachers’ own resources 

made the most, accounting for 51.79%; in addition, public education re-

sources play an important role in this online teaching. 

Considering the online teaching contents, teachers can carry out flexi-

ble teaching according to local conditions. On the basis of the spring sched-

ule, 78.84% of the teachers began to teach basic cultural courses and carried 

out epidemic prevention education, life and safety education, and other 

themed education. They also guided students to operate home-based labor, 

physical exercise, and other activities, which combining education with tal-

ent cultivation. 

As to the teaching mode and activities: live online classroom and cen-

tralized tutoring and Q&A are the teaching modes generally adopted by 

teachers; in addition, more than half of the teachers assigned and corrected 

homework (80.46%), answered questions online, and provided tutoring 

(76.32%) and sent digital learning resources (65.11%), which ensured the 

learning of students’ cultural foundation courses. What’s more, 62.66 percent 

C 



 

Vol.8, No.1, 2021 1062 

of teachers communicate with students’ parents to encourage them to super-

vise the students’ learning. 

In terms of teachers’ acceptability: teachers have a strong willingness 

to use online teaching. The perceived usefulness and willingness of rural 

teachers were significantly higher than those of urban teachers, and the ac-

ceptability of junior middle school teachers was the lowest. 

There are some problems in online teaching: the network environment 

and hardware equipment still need to be improved; teachers lack the ability 

to design online teaching; teachers’ information literacy is uneven, and they 

cannot accurately analyze the learning situation. 

Therefore, the author considered that the hardware facilities and soft-

ware resources should be improved to provide a good environment for online 

teaching; the teaching concept should be changed from “teaching for teach-

ing” to “teaching by learning”; the way of teacher training and teaching re-

search should be innovated to improve teachers’ ability of online teaching 

design; data-driven, individualized instruction should be realized based on 

learning analysis technology. 

 

Source: China Educational Technology, 2020; 2020 (5):15-21.