We have gone through various parts of the world looking for silver linings in education during COVID-19. In this episode, we return to China, a country that has controlled COVID-19 and has opened schools for all children. We are very fortunate to have three wonderful guests to talk with us. Bios below the video.
Dr. Chuang Wang is Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Macau. His expertise includes educational research design, statistical data analyses, and program evaluation. He has published 8 books, 21 book chapters, 120 peer-reviewed journal articles, and 15 conference proceedings. He also served as the President of the Chinese American Educational Research and Development Association (2008-2010). His research project to establish digital citizenship by implementing cyber security curriculum with middle school students was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. His journal article about student perception of helpfulness of facilitation strategies that enhance instructor presence, connectedness, engagement, and learning in online courses received the 1st place award from the Division of Distance Learning of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology in the United States. He also published his research with data from MOOC courses in top-tier journals.
Cody Abbey is a project manager at the Rural Education Action Program (REAP), which is a collaborative research center at Stanford University that aims to narrow the urban-rural gap in China through action-based research by identifying and solving rural China’s education and health problems. He specifically manages projects related to education technology and mental health and has co-authored over ten papers on Chinese rural education that have been published in reputed academic journals.Before REAP he was part of the inaugural class of the Yenching Academy at Peking University and completed his bachelor’s degree in public policy at Princeton University, where he wrote his thesis about urban and rural attitudes towards the reform of China’s college entrance examination. He has also held internships at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu and CNN’s Beijing bureau. With a long-held interest in education equity, he previously earned a teaching license in Mandarin Chinese and has served as a volunteer teacher in rural China.
OUYANG Bin, Founder and CEO of Lingyun Education, started his career as professional journalist and editor in the United States and China, and also served as columnist for the Chinese website of BBC and New York Times. He has received awards for his reporting and analyses from the Asian Development Bank, the Reuters Foundation etc. Since 2015, Mr. Ouyang has been engaged in educational issues. He initiated some educational programs on liberal arts and k-12 partnered with Jack Ma Foundation, Beijing Normal University, Rockefeller family, Vanke Corp and China Foundation for Peace and Development. He and his team have been working with Chinese education bureaus and schools on professional development and education conferences. Ouyang earned his B.A. in Journalism from China Youth University for Political Sciences in Beijing, and his M.A. in Regional Studies-East Asia from Harvard University, concentrating on political sciences and history. He was a Harvard-Yenching Fellow from 2010-2012 and Arthur Ross Fellow from 2012-2013.