On the “Online and Offline Blended Teaching” Mode for Ideological and Political Theory Courses in Universities—A Case of “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism” ()
1. Introduction
With the rapid development of information technology, modern society has entered the era of “Internet plus”, and the teaching mode of colleges and universities is changing under the new situation. The organic combination of traditional classroom education and advanced educational technology to construct an online and offline blended teaching model has become an important trend in the current development of teaching reform in universities. Promoting the blended teaching mode in the context of “Internet plus” is conducive to optimizing the traditional teaching methods, highlighting the advantages of online and offline teaching, and has important practical significance for enriching classroom teaching resources, improving the quality of classroom teaching, improving the students’ dominant position in learning, and promoting personalized teaching.
At present, the traditional teaching mode of teaching ideological and political theory courses in Chinese universities generally adopts a lecture-based approach. This teaching mode is teacher led in both teaching activity design and classroom teaching, and there are still shortcomings such as disconnection from learning in the network era, low teaching efficiency, low student participation in the classroom, lack of initiative in learning, and single teaching evaluation. How to keep up with the development and changes of the network era in ideological and political theory courses, make students become the masters of learning, and encourage students to change their passive learning into active learning, is an important topic that ideological and political course teachers need to study.
In order to revitalize ideological and political courses through the use of new media and technologies, promote the high integration of traditional advantages of ideological and political work with information technology, continuously enhance the affinity and pertinence of ideological and political course teaching in universities, and enhance the sense of the times and attractiveness of ideological and political courses [2] , the course teams of ideological and political courses in various universities are actively exploring the reform of the “online and offline blended teaching” mode. Blended teaching emphasizes students’ initiative, enthusiasm and participation in learning, and also pays attention to teachers’ in-depth guidance of in-depth learning of systems science knowledge, so as to truly improve the teaching quality. This article combines the classroom practice of “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism” and the “Wisdom Tree” platform to construct the “online and offline blended teaching” mode of “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism”, exploring how to achieve the ultimate goal of mutual learning and moral education in ideological and political courses in universities through online and offline blended teaching.
2. The Importance of the Reform of the “Online and Offline Blended Teaching” Mode in “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism”
The ideological and political theory course in universities is an important course for providing ideological and political theory education to college students and cultivating the “Four Haves” people who meet the needs of China’s modernization construction and the great cause of reform and opening-up. Marxism is a rigorous and complete theoretical system, which is composed of the principles of Marxist philosophy, Marxist political economy and scientific socialism. The theoretical system of Marxism is broad and profound, and the mastery of its basic knowledge is the prerequisite and foundation for learning to apply theory to guide practice. The reform of the “online and offline blended teaching” mode is conducive to integrating instant information and textbook content, solving the teaching difficulties of separating theory from practice and teaching from learning, and further enhancing the pertinence and effectiveness of ideological and political theory teaching; At the same time, it is also conducive to improving the teaching effectiveness of the course on the basic principles of Marxism and the learning efficiency of students.
2.1. It Can Respond to the Practical Problems of the Current Era and Enhance the Pertinence and Timeliness of Ideological and Political Theory Courses
The development of human history to this day has undergone tremendous and profound changes compared to the era in which Marx lived. However, from the perspective of human historical development, the world is still in the era of Marxism’s transition from capitalism to socialism. We should learn to use Marxism to analyze and solve contemporary problems. However, the content of the course “Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism” is abstract and difficult to understand. Continuing to adopt the traditional classroom indoctrination teaching mode is difficult to attract students’ interest in learning, resulting in students’ difficulty in accepting and recognizing the basic theories of Marxism from their hearts, let alone solving problems of the times with the basic theories of Marxism.
The online and offline blended teaching emphasizes the teaching philosophy of “student-centered”, with teachers transitioning from being knowledge instillers to knowledge guides. Under the guidance of teachers, students engage in self-directed learning online based on their own abilities and knowledge level, independently grasp the learning progress, select learning content, and engage in independent thinking and exploration. In the classroom, teachers provide assistance to students in addressing problems and confusion encountered in self-directed learning, and at the same time, in conjunction with current social hotspots, organize thematic learning activities to encourage students to participate in classroom discussions, It is conducive to stimulating students’ interest in learning and enthusiasm for participation, cultivating their learning ability and creativity, and thus enhancing the targeted and effective teaching of the “Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism”.
2.2. It Can Provide Diverse Learning Platforms to Enhance the Teaching Effectiveness of Ideological and Political Theory Courses
Compared with the traditional classroom teaching mode of ideological and political theory courses, online and offline blended teaching can provide students with diverse learning platforms. It mainly takes online teaching platforms as the core, with various high-quality online teaching resources and information communication technologies as auxiliary, combining online and offline teaching, and flexibly carrying out teaching activities, thus achieving cross time and space communication between teachers and students. Students can raise questions at any time, teachers can provide answers at any time, and if encountering difficult or controversial issues, they can also solve them through offline teacher explanations and student discussions. Therefore, the online and offline blended teaching mode can enhance the teaching effectiveness of ideological and political theory courses by providing students with diverse learning platforms to learn and master the basic principles of Marxism.
2.3. Innovative Teaching Means and Methods Can Enhance Students’ Learning Efficiency in Ideological and Political Theory Courses
With the continuous development of digital media technology, people’s dependence on the Internet is increasing, and the demand is becoming stronger. As a new teaching mode, online and offline blended teaching has begun to receive widespread attention from educators. The so-called blended teaching refers to the organic integration of digital teaching and face-to-face classroom teaching, including the blending of teaching resources, teaching environment, teaching technology, and teaching evaluation. Through various combinations, innovative teaching methods and methods have been developed, which not only play the leading role of teachers in guiding, inspiring, and monitoring the teaching process, but also fully reflect students’ initiative, enthusiasm, and creativity as the main body of the learning process, thereby enhancing students’ learning efficiency in ideological and political theory courses.
3. Practice and Exploration of the Reform of the “Online and Offline Blended Teaching” Mode
The “Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism” is a compulsory course for ideological and political theory in universities. The traditional teaching mode of ideological and political theory courses can no longer meet the requirements of the development of information society, nor can it meet the personalized and diverse needs of students. In response to this situation, the School of Marxism at Zhejiang Yuexiu University of Foreign Languages, where the author is located, has begun to practice and explore the reform of the “Online and Offline Blended Teaching” mode for the course “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism”.
3.1. Allocating Class Hours Reasonably and Implementing a Blended Online and Offline Teaching Mode
The course “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism” has a wide range of content, with a total of 51 class hours. It adopts a blended teaching mode of online learning and offline face-to-face learning. Among them, there are 17 online hours and 34 offline hours. The teaching content involved is divided into four modules and a total of seven chapters, with the introduction section accounting for 2/51 of the total class hours and 4/51 of the offline class hours, respectively; Some online and offline class hours of Marxist Philosophy account for 8/51 and 16/51 of the total class hours respectively; Some online and offline class hours of Political Economics account for 5/51 and 10/51 of the total class hours respectively; Some online and offline class hours of Scientific Socialism account for 2/51 and 4/51 of the total class hours respectively.
E-learning (17 class hours in total), students need to use computers or mobile phones to give full play to their subjective initiative for autonomous learning according to the teacher’s task list. Offline learning (a total of 34 class hours), guiding students to learn at designated times and locations, organizing students to discuss certain issues, and answering questions and doubts for students.
3.2. Designing Online Teaching Activities Based on Resource Platforms
When designing online teaching activities for “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism”, on the one hand, we will leverage the power of first-class universities to establish a high-quality network resource sharing platform and introduce the MOOC online course of Wisdom Tree Beijing Normal University. On the other hand, we will actively build our own online courses and record school-based videos. The course team recorded “Understanding the Different Marx” from an interesting point of view to improve students’ enthusiasm for learning the course. At the same time, we also recorded videos related to courses such as “Marxism and the Chinese Dream”, “A Millennium Problem”, “Materialism and Idealism Debate”, which are used as course video resources for online teaching. The basic course framework, teaching syllabus, teaching schedule, teaching courseware, lesson plans, and other related course resources have been published on the high-quality course online teaching resource platform of Zhejiang Yuexiu University of Foreign Languages.
In the design of blended teaching, the basic design principle of student-centered should be adhered to. When designing online teaching activities, it is necessary to fully reflect the different positions and roles of teachers as the main body of teaching and students as the main body of learning. Teachers should hand over the initiative of learning to students, design course content and teaching activities with students in a purposeful and planned manner, and strive to cultivate students’ autonomy, collaborative spirit, and innovative ability. Teachers design online teaching activities based on task-driven design. The online teaching platform groups students in the class, assigns a list of self-learning tasks, and students learn online teaching resources based on various teaching resources. If students encounter difficult problems during the learning process, they can raise them to the teacher through online Q&A, discussion, and other forms. This teaching activity is mainly divided into two steps: firstly, students learn on the front line of the class based on the autonomous learning tasks assigned by the teacher, including reading teaching objectives and watching online video resources; The second is to conduct problem-based independent preview and collaborative exploration. By reading teaching objectives, students can not only clarify their learning objectives, but also understand the teacher’s teaching intentions; Teachers guide students with questions and require them to preview in advance. For the problems that need to be considered in autonomous preview, they can be solved by repeatedly watching online video resources and courseware, or by dividing students into groups of 3 - 5 people to discuss and collaborate. The team members divide their work and collaborate, completing the understanding of knowledge points through cooperation, and improving their ability to analyze and solve problems [3] .
Teachers can follow students’ learning situation at any time through the “Cloud Class” learning platform, and publish activities such as check-in, voting, answering, discussion, and homework assignment on the platform [4] . This learning mode can effectively promote communication and interaction between teachers and students, as well as between students, and improve students’ learning initiative, enthusiasm, and efficiency.
3.3. Deepening Classroom Teaching and Doing a Good Job in Connecting Online and Offline
The offline classroom teaching stage is mainly divided into two parts: connecting online content and offline new content. Online connection mainly aims to answer questions and clarify the problems that students face in online autonomous learning, and further deepen the knowledge points and curriculum system of the “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism” course. Offline new content includes teacher guidance, student reading, teacher questioning, student group discussions, and teacher summary. In order to further test students’ understanding and mastery of the content of this class, the teacher fully utilizes the interactive function of the “Cloud Class” platform to complete learning interaction and online and offline connection. On the “Cloud Class” platform, teachers will assign some exercise questions (mainly single choice and multi choice) based on the course content for testing. Through testing, teachers can further understand the problems that exist in students’ learning, and take measures to further deepen students’ understanding and mastery of the basic principles of Marxism.
In order to deepen classroom teaching, the course team also needs to organize and guide practical groups to carry out social practice activities around a certain theme. Each practical group ultimately presents the practical results through practical reports, videos, or pictures, and uses classroom time to showcase and exchange the results with the practical groups.
3.4. Establishing a Diversified Assessment Mode and Improving the Evaluation Mechanism
In the practical teaching of ideological and political theory courses in universities, it is necessary to establish a sound and comprehensive evaluation system and use diversified evaluation models to ensure the smooth implementation of the blended teaching mode. The evaluation system under the online and offline blended teaching mode of the course “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism” mainly includes two aspects: online teaching evaluation system and offline teaching evaluation system. Diversified evaluation models include diversification of evaluation subjects, multi-dimensional evaluation content, and diversification of evaluation methods.
When establishing an online teaching evaluation system, the evaluation subject can be both teaching and students. The evaluation content includes watching videos, assigning homework, completing tests, discussing and posting, and group communication and interaction. The evaluation method can be based on the completion of homework, conducting tests, or evaluating learning attitudes. Teachers can set clear class hour requirements on online teaching platforms and rate students based on their completion of online learning tasks; Teachers can also rate the level of online communication and interaction; Students in the same group can also conduct mutual evaluation and scoring. Among them, online grades account for 40% of the total score, the completion of online learning tasks accounts for 20% of the total score online, online communication and interaction grades account for 10% of the total score online, and peer evaluation grades account for 10% of the total score online.
When establishing an offline teaching evaluation system, it can be divided into three aspects: classroom performance, final evaluation, and practical teaching activities. Teachers rate students based on their frequency of interaction with teachers in class and their performance in group discussions; The teacher also scores the total score of students in the final exam; The course team evaluates students’ practical reports after participating in practical teaching activities. Among them, offline performance accounts for 60% of the total evaluation score, classroom performance score accounts for 10% of the total evaluation score, final exam score accounts for 40% of the total evaluation score, and practical report score accounts for 10% of the total evaluation score. Finally, the teacher will synthesize the online and offline evaluation scores to obtain the final assessment score of the blended teaching mode. The specific assessment methods are shown in Table 1.
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Table 1. Online and offline assessment methods for “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism”.
The course “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism” changes the traditional assessment mode and implements a combination of process assessment and summative assessment, as well as online and offline assessment, which helps to conduct a more comprehensive evaluation of students. Based on this, it examines students’ stage learning situation and learning effectiveness, assesses their learning attitude and ability, and truly improves the quality of education.
4. Teaching Evaluation of the “Online and Offline Blended Teaching” Mode
The reform of online and offline blended teaching has been relatively mature after several years of application, and students have also recognized this teaching mode. The final survey questionnaire also showed high satisfaction with this type of teaching. Especially after using the interactive function in the “Cloud Class”, the teacher-student interaction effect and the Flipped Classroom are easy to achieve. Once the pure theoretical teaching mode of the course is changed, students’ learning enthusiasm is greatly improved.
4.1. It Enhances Students’ Autonomous Learning Ability
During the course, students have a high enthusiasm for self-directed learning and consciously complete the online course video watching and chapter testing within the specified time (usually 2 weeks), achieving good results. Before each offline teaching, organize students to watch the high-quality MOOC on the Wisdom Tree of Beijing Normal University as online teaching resources. These online resources have served as the main teaching functions, especially during the epidemic period, playing an important role in supplementing teaching resources.
4.2. It Has Improved Students’ Information Literacy
Through a semester of self-directed learning, students not only become familiar with the basic use of teaching resource platforms, but also proficiently master the level of use of basic office software (DingTalk Group). From the first group report at the beginning of the semester to the semester summary at the end of the semester, students’ information literacy has been greatly improved, and their language expression and teamwork ability have been improved.
5. Experience and Shortcomings in the Reform of the “Online and Offline Blended Teaching” Mode
The course “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism” adopts the “online and offline blended teaching” mode, which has achieved good teaching results and evaluation. However, there are also some problems in the actual teaching process. Due to differences in teachers’ teaching abilities and levels, as well as students’ maladaptation to new environments and teaching methods and means, the following key issues need to be addressed during the teaching process:
5.1. The Teaching Level of Teachers Needs to Be Improved
The difference in teaching ability of teachers is not reflected in their familiarity with knowledge points, but in how to effectively organize teaching language, vividly explain teaching cases, effectively organize classroom activities, and ask valuable questions in the face of a large number of learners, in order to achieve the role of a guide. In response to such shortcomings, our course team helps team members hone their lessons through communication methods such as listening to lectures and teaching and research activities. We adopt a collective lesson preparation plan to share high-quality resources and spare no effort to create a golden course.
5.2. It Enhances Students’ Autonomous Learning Ability
Some students lack initiative and motivation in learning, often experiencing a lack of focus in the first month of school and a lack of focus in the next three months. In response to such issues, we discuss response methods during teaching and research activities, including how to design task lists, optimize courseware, video length, etc., adjust measures in a timely manner, and do our best to stimulate students’ online and offline enthusiasm.
5.3. The Teaching Environment in Universities Needs Improvement
Online and offline blended teaching is characterized by the internalization of knowledge in the classroom. In addition to the independent completion of tasks by students, an important link in the internalization process is group collaborative learning, which requires that the number of students should not be too large. In the actual teaching environment of this course, the number of students in a teaching class is mostly more than 70. In this teaching environment, it is difficult for teachers to control the classroom situation, feedback from pre class exercises cannot guarantee effective and timely completion. In response to these problems, we try to develop and utilize the E-learning time before and after class, allocate the group collaboration online in advance, and give students sufficient time to prepare to achieve the best teaching effect.
6. Conclusion
In the reform of the “online and offline blended teaching” mode for ideological and political theory courses in universities, there is a close integration of online and offline teaching. Online videos emphasize the analysis of teaching priorities and difficulties, while offline teaching emphasizes the teaching of principles. The intuitive nature of online video teaching helps students deeply understand the knowledge points. Offline teaching emphasizes the integrity of the textbook system, which helps students comprehensively grasp the basic principles of Marxism. At the same time, it has innovated the task driven online and offline teaching methods. In order to meet the requirements of students’ rapid understanding of tasks and properly decompose tasks, the difficulty of task setting is also controlled in an appropriate range, so as to facilitate the smooth completion of E-learning and offline classroom. Such teaching mode reform is an effective way to overcome the drawbacks of the current ideological and political course in colleges and universities. Perfect teaching design can stimulate the enthusiasm and initiative of teachers and students in teaching and learning to a certain extent. However, due to the unique characteristics of ideological and political course such as knowledge, theory, system and seriousness, it is also required to find the balance between traditional and modern teaching forms in the online and offline blended teaching reform. By giving full play to the leading role of teachers in teaching, while also respecting the autonomy and individuality of students in learning [5] , we can truly achieve the goal of cultivating moral character in ideological and political theory courses in universities.
Acknowledgements
As I am about to complete this paper and at the end of my project on the blended teaching reform of the “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism” course, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my teaching team. From the script of the course video to the completion of recording, to the editing and website uploading in the later stage, every part of it cannot be separated from the active participation and hard work of the teaching team. At the same time, I also want to thank my students for their active cooperation and opinions in the blended teaching reform of the “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism” course, which is an important guarantee for the smooth completion of this project and the completion of this paper.
NOTES
*The Blended Teaching Reform of the Course “Introduction to Basic Principles of Marxism” is a project of the Online and Offline Blended Teaching Reform Project at Zhejiang Yuexiu University of Foreign Languages, with project number JGH1915.