Switching to a Synchronous Mode of Chinese Calligraphy Teaching During the Period of COVID-19 Pandemic: An Experience Report
Ken W. Li · The Electronic Journal of e-Learning · 2021
The purpose of this report is to describe how a teacher utilized technology to teach elderly learners Chinese calligraphy and how they learnt. Before the incidence of COVID-19, six sessions of Chinese calligraphy were conducted in a community services centre for elderly learners in Hong Kong from 9:00am to 5:00pm on a weekday every week, with each session lasting 75 minutes. There were about 20 learners aged above 50 in each session, and they were naturally grouped in pairs and sat together in a classroom equipped with a data projector. At the very beginning of each session, a teacher of Chinese calligraphy explained the contents of Chinese poems or mottos on the handouts he gave, and he also discussed the Chinese fonts he would use. The model of pedagogy of teaching Chinese calligraphy in a technology-enriched environment was successful with the justifications in accordance with research studies in Bozkurt and Ruthven (2017), Drijvers et al. (2010), Geiger (2014), and Jeong and Hmelo-Silver (2016). In addition, the learners gave positive feedback, and expressed sincere thanks for their teacher's devotion to Chinese calligraphy teaching especially in the period of the epidemic of COVID-19.