Study and practice: How to construct open classroom in higher education via virtual classroom

Abstract

How to enhance teaching qualities in higher education by using information technology are important issues and tasks needed to be studied and solved by education technology researchers. This paper mainly focuses on exploring and practicing how to construct open classroom in higher education via combining the physical classroom space and virtual classroom space. Using virtual classroom to improve teaching enviroments is a tendency in global education environments. We also describe a framework about virtual classroom construction system based on traditional classroom. Four instructing models and cases via virtual classroom are described which are practiced by four professors from Peking University. Anyway, we find virtual classroom is a good and efficient way for expanding traditional classroom space to give more powerful technology support for classroom teaching though some problems about teaching and technology still exist and are needed to be improved in future.