Peking University, March 15, 2021: At the invitation of the University of Tokyo (UTokyo), Gong Qihuang, executive vice president of Peking University, met online with Naoto Sekimura, vice president of UTokyo. The meeting, which was held on March 12, discussed the opportunities and challenges of online education during the pandemic and the cooperation between the two universities.

During the meeting

Gong noted the long history of the friendship between Peking University and the University of Tokyo. The two universities have long maintained a strategic partnership, with active cooperation bearing fruitful results on both sides. He shared the experience of hybrid education, a combination of online and traditional classroom teaching, at Peking University during the period of normalized pandemic control. After the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, Peking University responded quickly, transferring over 4000 courses online so as to ensure that the academic year could proceed normally. Since the autumn of 2020, Peking University has resumed classroom teaching with integrated prevention and control measures, while also providing online learning for overseas students. Gong added that Peking University is looking forward to working with the University of Tokyo to further exchange experience, promoting mutual learning, improving teaching quality and expanding areas of collaboration.

Gong Qihuang delivers address

Sekimura said the University of Tokyo and Peking University have established a relationship built on deep trust. He  pointed out that after the outbreak of COVID-19, the two universities' research and teaching were moved online, presenting an unprecedented set of challenges. Since March of 2020, the University of Tokyo has also started online lessons. During this period, UTokyo has given its full support to online teaching through the course assistant system. It also launched a bespoke website and email system, as well as providing training for online teaching skills. These new platforms create a space suitable for conducting scientific research as well as teaching and communication between the two universities in the post-pandemic era. He said the University of Tokyo hopes to take this meeting as an opportunity to further strengthen exchanges and collaboration with Peking University, as well as advancing the development of the two universities’ strategic partnership.

Naoto Sekimura delivers address

Meanwhile, faculty members from both universities also attended the meeting, in which they shared experience of online teaching.

Source: PKU News (Chinese)