University has prepared for a year for COVID-19 surge

Taiwan has been an outlier in Asia, managing to control COVID-19 outbreaks on the island so effectively that its universities have never had to shut down or suspend face-to-face classes like others in the region. Until now.

A major outbreak of COVID-19 on the island has led to Taiwan announcing it will close its borders for a month from midnight on 19 May. All schools in the capital Taipei and surrounding region of New Taipei City have closed and universities have shut down campus activities and, in common with other countries, shifted to online teaching.

National Taiwan University (NTU), National Chengchi University and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University were among those switched to full online instruction after the Taiwan government’s Central Epidemic Command Centre raised the pandemic alert to Level 2 on 12 May.

Others outside the capital region moved classes with 60 to 100 students online and cancelled indoor and major outdoor events, but continue to hold smaller classes face-to-face.

NTU and others like National Chengchi University have barred outsiders from entering the campus from 17 May.

Unlike other countries where online teaching was rushed in under emergency conditions, they have been able to prepare in advance, with several universities conducting practice runs last year and earlier this year in preparation for a switch at short notice to online learning.

“Because of the pandemic we have asked all our teachers to return home to have a distance learning programme, so all courses are now online and there are no real-time face-to-face classes anymore,” Shih-Torng Ding, NTU’s vice president for academic affairs, told University World News.

Speaking on Thursday he added: “As of today we haven’t asked all students to return to their homes yet because the campus is relatively safe.” However, students have been told not to come into the campus and are staying in their accommodation whether it is on or off campus.

“But we have been preparing for this moment for more than a year. Starting from springtime last year, we taught all our teachers how to use our online teaching and learning platform and teachers have practiced on our distance learning programme,” Ding said.

The university has been building up the number of courses on the platform over the past year, in case of having to move fully online, though even with preparation the speed of the surge in Taiwan caught many by surprise.

Sudden COVID-19 surge

Even as COVID-19 raged elsewhere, the number of daily new cases in Taiwan had been in single digits since an initial surge in March 2020, and Taiwan had gone more than 250 days without a single case before cases rose alarmingly to around 273 a day on 19 May.

Taiwan’s 2,825 cases and 15 deaths have almost all been registered since late April. The caseload is mainly centred around Taipei.

Controls on international travel had been a key factor in Taiwan’s success in repelling the pandemic until now. Taiwan initially closed its border to foreign nationals on 19 March 2020 but began allowing international students from low-risk countries to return from 17 June onwards with strict quarantine rules in force. Foreign students were allowed to re-enter in early February after suspending entry for international students for around a month at the start of the year.

Foreign students, numbering around 19,500, had been advised not to leave Taiwan in case they may not be permitted to return.

But preparations were made from the start. In March 2020 the government already allocated some TWD400 million (US$14 million) in funding for higher education institutions to support pandemic-related initiatives.

NTU also receives some US$80 million a year from the government to improve teaching and learning, “so we used some of this money to develop our online platform known as NTU COOL or NTU COurses On Line”, Ding said, adding that alumni contributions were also used to fund the move online.

“We also had a lot of seminars to teach teachers and students how to do online teaching and how to do online learning. Our teachers and faculty could come to these seminars and workshops to learn how the system works.”

The university was able to set up proper software to help teach faculty and teachers to use online learning, “so they know how to teach better online”, he said.

Ding noted that it was easier for younger faculty. “So we had the luxury of forming an ‘army’ of DAs – digital assistants. We have more than a hundred DAs that teachers in the departments can apply to, to help them to establish this kind of online learning system for their courses.”

Gradual shift online

Around March last year bigger lectures for over 100 students were moved online as a precautionary measure, Ding said, and then smaller classes. “Some faculty felt ‘Why should we do that when we don’t have a pandemic in the community at all’. But we asked all the teachers to practise. We did not want a situation like elsewhere, like in the United States, where things got ugly all of a sudden and everyone was asked to leave the campus and do online teaching.”

Universities in many countries were forced to set up an emergency online learning system quickly and then transitioned to a longer-term system. NTU had time on its hands to allow teachers to learn the system properly, “so gradually big classes went online and then small classes, but only now, about a week ago, we implemented it for all classes”, Ding said.

The university has also been able to prepare teachers better for some of the downsides of online teaching and learning experienced by others who had little time to prepare for the switch to online.

Interaction with friends, teachers and colleagues is important in the online context, Ding noted. “In the past two years we have been trying very hard to get teachers more involved in teaching technologies to involve students in the discussion and in the learning process, and the teaching process, because if you go online all of a sudden you tend to forget to involve the audience in the discussion.”

Last year NTU conducted two different polls on student evaluations of online learning effectiveness. For face-to-face courses, in the past, learning outcomes were rated around 4.4 out of 5 in effectiveness on average, according to indicators devised by NTU. But in the last semester with online teaching practice in place, the average was around 4.48 out of 5 for learning effectiveness, Ding said.

“It’s actually just an inch ahead, but at least it is not lower than before,” he noted. NTU polls of students also show that students like it because it saves them time going to and fro to classes and they can attend video courses or real-time teaching online, he added.

But Ding acknowledged that online learning was very difficult for medical and other practical courses. The hope is that the current restrictions will be short-lived, and Taiwan will be able to procure enough vaccines, so that students can continue with blended learning.