COVID-19 and Korea
COVID-19 has officially been classified as a pandemic by WHO, causing infections and fatalities across world. Korea was one of the first countries to be hit by COVID-19 following China. At first, the pandemic didn’t seem so dire. However, there was a mass religious gathering in Daegu, a southern province of Korea, where a COVID-19 confirmed patient attended, causing a massive infection to the people who also attended the gathering. Without knowing, these potential patients traveled across the entire country while carrying COVID-19 virus with them. Consequently, major cities in Korea, including Seoul, became vulnerable to COVID-19 infection, with Daegu standing as the worst impacted cities of all. Few weeks passed since the first outbreak of COVID-19 in Korea, and we are witnessing a decreasing trend of confirmed cases, thanks to all those front-line medical staffs.
COVID-19 and Korean education sector
Decreasing trend does not mean extinction, and other sectors of society, most notably economic and education sector, are still cowering to minimize the exposure to COVID-19. Companies, especially the ones in tech industry, were quick to adopt remote-working using platforms like Zoom, Slack, Notion, etc. For schools, it was much more difficult to quickly transition to remote environment, because most schools were simply not prepared for such education environment. In fact, among 213 major universities in Korea, the percentage of online classes hovers around 1% only. The situation for K-12 is even more complicated, as they are even less flexible to adopt commercial platforms due to specification stipulated by Ministry of Education. The impact gets more devastating when the impact is assessed by global scope. According to UNESCO, 165 countries have shut down, preventing 1.5 billion students (87% of entire student population in the world) from attending school.
Ultimately, remote classroom was the only solution to keep the classroom continued. As mentioned, universities, instead of K-12, were more quick to adopt remote classroom as they are less reliant on government restriction. The questions for universities were “how to establish remote classroom setting for all classes, and what tools and platforms are best to achieve that?” Universities were simply not equipped with adequate IT infrastructure, so they naturally looked to commercial platforms with much capable server infra and service usability. Here is how Korean Universities are adapting to remote schooling using various tools.
1. Real-time/online lecture : Zoom, Youtube, CLASSUM
Many universities have adopted commercial video conferencing platforms like Zoom, or Youtube. Although these two platforms are known for high stability and quality streaming services, they each have their drawbacks. While Zoom may provide high quality video streaming, it is not the best tool for communication, or document sharing. The foreign usability (granted it is fairly easy, Korean educators are just not that familiar with using video conferencing tools) also presents a hurdle to get the educators on-boarded. Youtube, on the other hand, may be much more accessible tool for video streaming. Yet, unless properly set up, the session can be open to public, and the educator may receive random participants who are just there to disrupt classes for fun (There really is a recorded case for this!)
CLASSUM is also widely used among universities. Began as a class communication tool, it is now equipped with both live streaming feature as well as recorded video uploading feature. Many educators are not familiar with getting up in front of camera and conduct a real time session with only camera to interact with. Hence some educators much prefer to record their lectures and dub audio file on top. Within just 2 weeks, 700 video uploads have been made using CLASSUM.
To support those who wish to conduct class live, CLASSUM has integrated Zoom into its product. CLASSUM users can host and initiate live session with a simple click, all the while maintaining communication channels on the simultaneously, as shown on the image.
2. In-class communication : CLASSUM, CLASSTING
Zoom and Youtube may deliver lectures online, but they could not fulfill the needs for communication between educators and students. This inability to communicate dynamically as they would do on offline class emerged as one of the major discontentment by students, to the extent that students organizations in some colleges are calling for partial refund of their tuition. SBS, one of the major news outlets in Korea, reported an interview with a student, who said “it was good that I could access online lecture anytime, but I had hard time asking the questions I had at the moment to the professor.”
CLASSUM and CLASSTING are both Ed-Tech companies that are specialized in facilitating communication between educators and Students. The main difference is that CLASSUM is primarily targeting university environment, while CLASSTING is mainly targeting K-12.
While both services provide interactive platform on which users can easily post questions and replies, CLASSUM goes further to provide actions that are designed to induce even more participation by students. On every question, there is ‘Curious’ button, that when clicked, the answer to the question is shared by all those who clicked the button, facilitating knowledge sharing. Students can post question anonymously, easing the users mentality that they will not be judged by the quality of questions that they ask.
3. Document submission : CLASSUM, school LMS
A typical class usually entails submission of reports, homework, etc. Completing this job in a normal circumstance would simply be done by submitting in person, or via school LMS in place. However with remote classroom, the work needed to be submitted via educators’ personal email or chat room, making it hard to track the students’ work from personal space.
Some universities would use personal cloud drive to exchange students work, but it may be vulnerable to security.
Many universities look to CLASSUM as CLASSUM provides seamless exchange of file, image, and video upload, which all files are track-able from the post it was attached. Educators can give out instant feedback and grading as they could check the submission on a real-time basis.
Contributions of Ed-Tech that made transition to remote class possible
After the outbreak of COVID-19, and the news of schools closing down spread, the Ed-tech startups were the first to run to the scene and offered their services for free in order to ensure that the students receive quality education they deserve. These startups were awarded by Korean Minister of Education for their good deeds.
Just prior to COVID-19, no one in Korea would have assumed that the schools would shut down, even at the cost of compromising academic days. This was truly an unprecedented event, which, without proper and timely support from technology platforms from both domestic and foreign front, could have resulted in even more dire situation. It was the IT tools, like Zoom, CLASSUM, Youtube that kept the classrooms in operation, but it was the willingness of Ed-tech startups to partake in subduing national catastrophe that kept the fervor of education kindled.
CLASSUM is a communication tool for education used by institutions around the world, including Samsung, Hyundai, LG CNS, Shiseido, and KAIST.
Learn more about CLASSUM 👉 www.classum.com
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