This episode is centered around education enabled by technology: Fostering learning in under-sourced village schools in China with Chaoran Wang & Jasmine Zhu.
This episode introduces how synchronous hybrid instruction provides learning opportunities for children in under-sourced Chinese village schools. The synchronous hybrid class, built by Project VolunONLINE (支教中国2.0), a nonprofit based in Shanghai, adopts a dual-teacher model with an online instructor and a local classroom teacher. For this episode, we will have Dr. Chaoran Wang, a former voluntary online English instructor and researcher of Project VolunONLINE, and Jasmine Zhu, a teacher educator and content developer of the nonprofit. Chaoran and Jasmine will be sharing their stories and introducing their experiences, challenges, struggles, and hopes of working with rural Chinese children and voluntary online teachers. Dr. Chaoran Wang will also reflect on how, as an overseas language teacher, she made use of the online spaces to provide innovative learning experiences for rural students. She will have a short presentation of some of her experiences with children in one rural school in the program at the start.