Redefining learning and schools
Kuo Bor-chen, director-general of the Department of Information and Technology Education at the Ministry of Education, who is responsible for building its “Adaptive Learning” network, points out that growth in online learning is an established international trend that has only gained steam with the pandemic. Recent domestic and foreign research shows that access to online educational resources can effectively improve academic performance among lagging students.
Making use of online curricula, the Junyi Academy, which aims to supplement in-classroom instruction to help bridge learning gaps and is seeking to “fight the pandemic without suspending learning,” had amassed a total of 2.38 million registered users by September of 2020. During the pandemic, the number of new registrations and active users both broke annual records set in 2019, with users accessing learning modules more than 1 million times.
In light of the coming 5G era, Junyi Academy CEO Ray Lu cites the organization’s “2B3R4C” concept: “2B represents basic values and character. I believe that in facing an increasingly complex society, it is ever more important to have a strong base of core beliefs. The biggest difference between people and machines is found in these core values. For instance, what I like most about the six Kist Schools established by the Chengzhi Education Foundation is that they weight character development at 51% and study at 49%.” Secondly, only by strengthening the foundational “3R” skills—reading, writing and arithmetic—is it possible to lay the groundwork for lifelong learning.
PISA now includes an optional assessment of creativity, which has four items: written creativity, visual creativity, and creativity at solving both social and scientific problems. (These are the “4C” mentioned above.) When the entire world is on the lookout for these skills, how should we make the best use of online education to supplement basic knowledge? And how should we use project-based learning and other educational methods to cultivate diverse skills in students?