Bulletin No. 2, 2016

From Cyber to Hyper 23 of an online university called Minerva. There are no lectures at the US-based college startup. Professors hold their seminar-style classes online, allowing Minerva students to rotate through seven cities during four years of study, from Berlin to Buenos Aires, Seoul to San Francisco. ‘Without being bound by physical class sessions, Minerva students are freed to explore the real world and be immersed in each of those cultures as residents. The ultimate purpose of e-learning is to make room for the kind of experiential learning and liberal arts education that students always dream of having,’ remarked Professor Hau. New Function of Schools Professor Hau pointed out that flipped learning, when used wisely, realizes an optimal division of labour between humans and the computer. ‘Most in-class lectures are a repetitive act in which the teacher imparts the same thing every year, whether to an audience of 10 or 10,000. Such lectures should be given once and for all by those who are the best in the field and get recorded and developed into open resources, so that students can watch and learn them anytime, anywhere.’ For example, when students in Sichuan Province set out to study the classic Chinese prose ‘Moonlight over the Lotus Pond’, they stay home and watch videos of an eminent Beijing scholar interpreting the text with a theatrical approach. When the students go to school, they are led by their teachers to a real pond to feel what the author was trying to convey. ‘With the repetitive, robotic teaching removed from the classroom, a school can focus on the interactive and experiential part. When students get into a real school, we should offer them something virtual reality can never deliver,’ said Professor Hau. To deliver on the promises technology holds, Professor Hau stressed that teachers will need to become active agents for change, not just in implementing technological innovations, but in devising experiential learning that fosters skill- building and a love of life. ‘E-learning has allowed anyone to learn anything from the best teachers in the world for free. Then what is the place of a physical school? Any visionary educator should start to think about putting 10% of his/her effort on the production of digital material, and the other 90% in designing interactive, life-changing experiential activities.’