As of February 2, more than 24,000 online courses for university students have been opened to guarantee the continuance of academic activities during epidemic prevention and control period, according to a guideline released by the Chinese Ministry of Education.

Free access to the courses has been provided on 22 online course platforms, including Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), which offers 12 undergraduate disciplines and 18 vocational college majors.

Moreover, the sharing platform of national virtual teaching project is also open 24 hours.

The guidance requires higher learning institutions to count the workload of MOOC teachers and all teachers who undertake online teaching tasks, guide students to actively choose high-quality online courses, increase students' self-study time, and strengthen the quality of online learning processes and multiple assessments.

It also requires schools to establish a policy for mutual recognition and transformation of credits gained from online courses to ensure that students' studies are not affected by the epidemic.

Since many primary and secondary schools have also postponed the starting date of spring semester and will turn to online teaching, the ministry reminded these schools not to open online teaching courses before the official school day, which is different in different places across China but normally starts around mid-February.

The ministry suggested primary and secondary schools offer some epidemic prevention knowledge and mental health counseling for students to ensure they have a pleasant winter vacation.

(Cover image: A woman takes an online course. /VCG Photo)