From MIT’s open courseware to the proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), I have seen a lot efforts being taken towards blending advancements in technology with the goodwill of making knowledge accessible to all. As an online learning professional, I have been following reports and research on the impact of open education, but never before have I been so stunned by the results of a report. The report, originally published in the weekly edition of Chinese Youth newspaper in Dec 12, 2018, was about a program that provides a full-day live broadcast of a prestigious high school to 248 high schools in the rural areas of China.  

Instead of listening to their own instructors, students in the rural or “far-end” high schools watch a live broadcast of instruction from a high school in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province. According to the report, the launch of project faced strong resistance from teachers in these rural schools. They protested by tearing books apart. Some teachers even took a whole week off and left students “staring” at the screen by themselves.

But the screen played magic. It connected two parallel tracks of education that otherwise would never have been crossed. The first track is the “the best pioneer high school in China,” Chengdu No. 7 High School, which in 2017 sent 30 students to elite universities all over the world and over 70 students to Beijing and Tsinghua Universities (China’s equivalent of Harvard and MIT). The other track is the 248 high schools located in economically deprived rural areas of China, where the students are the “left-out” ones from their surrounding cities. For all 248 high schools, the number of students getting into the first-tier university remains a single digit.

Between 2002 and 2018, 72,000 students from the far-end have completed high school in this live broadcast format. Among them, 88 were admitted by Beijing or Tsinghua University and for the rest of them, almost all received college admission.

Their story demonstrated the power of live broadcasting, which is different from merely accessing course materials. In this format, the far-end students not only have access to the lecture and materials near-end students are using, but also have the chance to see how they are learning it. This allows the “far-end” students to see the gap between Chengdu No. 7 HS students and themselves. For example, in the first math test, the average score of No. 7 HS is 103 and a far-end school in Luqian County is 30. 

Being aware of the learning gap is the first step to closing the gap.  Many far-end students treat No. 7 students as their idols. Like watching a reality show, they observe their “idols” asking and answering questions in the classroom with admiration and see them as role models. The same is true for the teachers. The live cast not only allows far-end teachers to observe innovative teaching, but also gives them peer pressure to act more responsively. For example, when a No. 7 HS teacher promised to grade a test overnight, the far-end teachers would not be able to stretch it to two days as they had done in the past.

In addition to the light being shined on the learning gap is the realization of the economic disparity between the two groups. While many Chengdu No. 7 students have traveled nationally or internationally and know what they want to become, many far-end students have never even heard of the places mentioned in the master class. To those far-end students, the goal of learning is very different. One of them told the teacher, “since you praised me in the parents’ meeting, my father’s health gets better. I will study harder. I want to see him get well completely.” 

During the interview, a school administrator described the live cast class as “a catalyst.” When a teacher showed a remote student’s homework in the master class, her entire class on the “far-end” cried with excitement. To the kids in the poor, rural areas, the screen in front of the classroom sheds light into the well they are living in and offers them a rope to climb up. Once they grab this fate-changing rope, they do not let go of it. In Luqian County High School, for example, a teacher had to serve as a patrol officer to ensure that students leave the classroom after midnight because so many students chose to study through the night.

This report reminded me of a statistical report that shows the synchronous communication in online learning increased from 50% in 2017 to 60% in 2018 while asynchronous decreased by the same amount from 50% in 2017 down to 40% in 2018.

It seems that the live cast method of online learning is gaining traction on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. And maybe that screen in front of the classroom, or student, can really open up a world that students want to be in.