The Interim Characteristics of Large-Scale Online Education at Chinese Institutions of Higher Education—An Empirical Study Based on a Questionnaire Survey of Students, Instructors, and Administrative Personnel

Abstract In order to fully comprehend the state of online education at institutions of higher education in China during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the Online Education Task Group of the Center for Teaching and Learning Development at Xiamen University conducted a questionnaire survey of the state of online education, and a total of 334 institutions of higher education, 13,997 instructors, and 256,504 students participated in this survey. The results of the survey showed that large-scale online education in China met or even exceeded the expected goals for the first time, in a successful round of online educational practices, with important value as a reference for informatization construction at institutions of higher education in the post-pandemic era and the achievement of hybrid online-offline education. However, due to being “compelled” by the pandemic, this round of large-scale online education left behind many interim characteristics of this specific period of time in a number of areas, including the preparation of instructors and students for online education, support by education platforms, the technical services of education platforms, online services provided by schools, online education models and characteristics, outcomes in online education, the primary factors influencing outcomes in online education, existing problems in online education, the challenges faced by instructors and students in online education, and recommendations by instructors and students for improvements to online education. From a long-term perspective, these interim characteristics leave room for a series of reflections on subsequently continuing to deepen educational reforms. In the face of these interim characteristics having overtones of an “emergency response,” from the perspective of informatization construction in education in the post-pandemic era, this article proposes five relationships that must be properly handled: the relationship between the resources allocated to online education by programs and by the market; the relationship between hard development and educational concepts; the relationship between equity and efficiency; the relationships between different agents’ understandings and practices; and the relationship between domestic practices and international experiences.