A Turning Point for Chinese Higher Education: Developing Hybrid Education at Tsinghua University

This book explores how a major Chinese university pivoted to hybrid online and campus education as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the implications of this ‘turning point’ for Chinese higher education, and also for higher education globally. It looks at how the prolonged disruption has impacted the design of future hybrid arrangements for university teaching.

Presented in four parts, the book unpacks Tsinghua’s thoughtful yet swift strides into the new era of ‘global hybrid higher education.’ The book examines influential technology, education, policy, and global forces. It studies transformative leadership which guided change and construction of extensive and enabling technological infrastructure. Insights from evaluations of student and faculty experiences, interactions, and activities are accompanied by projections about emerging designs of global hybrid higher education. The research describes future steps for Tsinghua and global universities.

Articulating Tsinghua’s standing in China and the world, and its contribution to technology and education, this unique research will be of profound interest to students and academics in higher education and education policy and practice, as well as policy experts and higher education leaders around the world.

Hamish Coates is a Tenured Professor at Tsinghua University’s Institute of Education, Director of the Higher Education Research Division, and Deputy Director of the Tsinghua University Global Research Centre for the Assessment of College and Student Development. He was Professor of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne, Founding Director of Higher Education Research at the Australian Council for Educational Research, and Program Director at the LH Martin Institute for Tertiary Leadership and Management. He concentrates on improving the quality and productivity of higher education.

Yu Zhang is an Associate Professor in Economics of Education, at the Institute of Education, Tsinghua University. She serves as the member of the Tsinghua University Undergraduate Education Reform Consultation Committee, and member of the Tsinghua University Online Education Consultation Committee. Her research field include quantitative evaluation of education policy and the effectiveness of educational inputs. She is working to integrate cognitive neuroscience and machine learning to innovate education measurement instruments and theories and better explain the results of educational policy evaluation. Her track record includes over ten research projects including for China’s National Nature Science Foundation, two authored books and over fifty journal articles and book chapters. Her research is highly cited, and its policy impact has been recognized across China.

Manli Li is a Professor in the Science of Education at the Institute of Education Tsinghua University. She has served as a Fulbright Scholar at MIT, a DAAD visiting professor in RWTH Aachen, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of British Columbia and the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign. She leads interdisciplinary research projects to explore liberal arts education, engineering education, and K-12 reform in schools.

Zhou Zhong is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Education Tsinghua University. She graduated from Peking University and received her MS and PhD in education from the University of Oxford. She specialises in international and comparative education, higher education, education assessment, curriculum and has conducted her research extensively on education internationalization strategy, world-class university research, education project innovation and evaluation, mixed instructional design.