ViaX Online Education

Unfortunately graduation ceremony is not available for fresh graduates this year due to the impact of COVID19. Many of them are still working from home and remotely. Don't worry, we host our own graduation ceremony for newly graduates in ViaX team! Congratulations to all of them who thrive through this difficult time, look forward to what they will achieve at ViaX!

Sometimes you can't just make it on your own. Professor Urpelainen has suggested that asking students to prepare background memos before the start of program and sharing with each other after it starts actually make students start to work together even before they know each other.

Using Background Memos as a Teaching Tool Last week, I concluded a successful ViaX workshop on policy responses to COVID-19. One important component of this workshop was a policy simulation, where the students developed possible responses …

Today is Chinese National College Entrance Examination, aka the famous Gaokao. This year Gaokao was postponed to today, a month later than the usual date due to the COVID19. Although this year a mask is definitely needed in order to get admitted to test centers, we still would like to offer our best of luck to more than 10.7 million high school students. Beak many legs today!

ViaX Instructor Natalie Berkman, Ph.D. just shared with us her experience and journey with ViaX for the past 2 and half years in her blog about higher education.

As ViaX instructor, Dr. Berkman's long-running workshop, METHOD80 - Quantitative Tools for the Humanities and Social Science received one of the highest rating from our students last year. As ViaX friend, she has also been involved with the board member consulting and serve as our reference in the overseas/non-China market. We are very proud to say that Natalie is our instructor and also long-term friend and we are extremely honored that she could write this blog post about us.

In light of this tremendous relationship, Natalie will soon be featured on the up-coming series, ViaX Instructor Interview: Why did I become a ViaX instructor. Look forward!

Teaching Online with ViaX – Natalie Berkman, Ph.D. Teaching Online with ViaX May 14, 2020May 18, 2020 Natalie Berkman Education has recently been turned on its head as schools all over the world have been forced to migrate their instruction online at the drop of a hat. I have already written a post about how I had to manage such a change in the cont...

Have you ever thought about writing a paper regards to a popular mobile game while get accepted by a top-tier conference in media and communication? Well our student Rick certainly can show us how to do it. His paper focusing on Travel Frog, a widely popular, low-pressure, non-competitive game with carefully designed graphics emerged in 2018 just got accepted by IAMCR ( International Association for Media and Communication Research) this year.

Although the conference will only be held online in July instead of the original scheduled Beijing, we still want to say a big congratulations to Rick who made it the journay that lasted for more than a year.

What would you do when everything moves online? In this latest blog Professor Johannes Urpelainen addresses some essential tips for dealing with student assignments via virtual platform, especially learning management system. It is almost been a year since we started this monthly blog, let us know your thoughts below.

Assignments for Virtual Courses: A Survival Guide for Faculty One key challenge for virtual courses is assignments. Because students and instructors do not have face-to-face interaction, managing the process can be quite a challenge – and doubly so in these t…

Congratulations to ViaX student Ai from Nanchang University who was designated as Finalist in Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM), the extension of the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM). Only top 1% of the contestants can be included in this category. While MCM challenges teams of students to clarify, analyze, and propose solutions to open-ended problems, ICM aims to to develop and advance interdisciplinary problem-solving skills as well as competence in written communication. The contest attracts diverse students and faculty advisors from over 900 institutions around the world.

To all ViaX instructors and friends:

We are looking for members at International Association for College Admission Counseling (IACAC). Please feel free to contact us or recommend people you know from the Association. Much appreciated!

As a major way of assessing student's work, presentation is widely used among our various online programs including workshops and research programs. In this blog Professor Johannes Urpelainen shares with us some of his experience in conducting and organizing online presentations, and more importantly how we can effectively and efficiently utilize the virtual platform to maximaze the outcome of presentation. Let us know your thoughts below.

A Virtual But Captive Audience: Student Presentations in an Online Environment Online learning offers flexible tools for a wide variety of interactive learning techniques. Student presentations can strengthen the feeling of community and engagement in an online course. Here I…

In the past days, we normally send delicate gifts in these paper box to our students and instructors but now we are packing necessities in these souvenir boxs.

ViaX is donating facial masks to our instructors in need to help fight the coronavirus outbreak. The package are shipping from Beijing to instructors based globally who asked for help. We hope everyone out there including our instructors and students to stay safe and health during this epidemic, our support is with you and we wish everyone all the best.

In a matter of weeks, coronavirus (COVID-19) has changed how students are educated around the world. These risk-control decisions have led millions of students into temporary ‘home-schooling’ situations, with online classes play the critical and sometimes only role in the virtual education. The pandemic could pave the way for much larger-scale, cross-industry coalitions to be formed around a common educational goal, which ViaX and our senior advisor professor Johannes Urpelainen has been advocating for the past years.

Check out Professor Urpelainen's latest vlog on his thoughts on how academics can help mitigate coronavirus without compromising quality of teaching by using online education.

Social Distancing for Academics: Transitioning to Online Teaching At this time, the coronavirus wreaks havoc in higher education. Dozens of colleges and universities, including my own employer and the world’s leading public health research institution, John…