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Then in 2008, the concept of microlecture was formally introduced to people and applied to online courses by David Penrose from San Juan College in the United States (David Shieh, 2009). Course designers there cut the excess verbiage of a 60-minute lecture, do away with most of the details, and pare it down to key concepts and themes into a microlecture which needs as few as 60 seconds. They believe that in online education, such tiny bursts can teach just as well as traditional lectures when paired with assignments and discussions. At San Juan, microlectures were introduced in a new online degree program in occupational safety in the fall and are now expanding to subjects like reading, tribal governance, and veterinary studies.源/自:优尔:;论-文'网www.youerw.com
Probing into the situations in China, researchers find that there are plenty of different interpretations available. Hu tiesheng, a forerunner in this field in China, first defined microlecture as following: “a microlecture is a combination of all the teaching materials during the teaching-learning activity, and it is based on the new standards and classroom teaching outcomes, which uses educational videos as its carrier, focusing on a specific point in teaching process.” (Hu, Huang & Li, 2013).With time going by, he has improved the definition by emphasizing the importance of online courses with multiple learning methods
2013 was regarded as the first year in the microlecture field for its progressive construction and development (Xiang fangli, 2014). In 2013, several scholars put forward their understandings on microlecture. Jiao jianli (2013) believes that microlecture is an online educational video aiming at explaining a key point, presented by short and pithy online videos, and its intention is to be applied in teaching and learning activities. Li jiahou(2013) argued that microlecture means a mini lecture of about 10 minutes each in length, with its explicit teaching goals, short content and it should concentrate on one problem. Zhang yichun (2013) emphasizes the importance on teaching design and he defines it as a simple but complete teaching activity. Zheng xiaojun (2013)’s stress is on the various learning methods that microlecture employs.
1.2 Development of microlecture in China
The development of microlecture in China can be pided into three stages: the cognition and practice stage of constructing micro resources; the cognition and practice stage of micro teaching activities; and finally now, the cognition stage of micro online lectures (Hu et al., 2013). There are some general differences and respective characteristics among the three stages. In the cognition and practice stage of constructing micro resources, microlectures were largely used by teachers to observe, reflect and discuss, rather than for students’ independent learning. Also, people attached more importance to the resource construction, neglecting its application, expansibility, interactivity and dynamic developments. In the cognition and practice stage of micro teaching activities, microlecture was introduced to the “flipped classroom” as a vital component, used primarily for the purpose of preview, review and consolidation of the knowledge. At this stage, the complete process of teaching activity, resource construction and application of microlecture was highlighted, and people noticed that the process was not static; rather microlecture construction should be updated and improved throughout the application practice and teaching activities. Finally, through three-year constant practice, reflection and improvement, here comes the third stage, when micro online video lectures gain the characteristics as described in the following:
(1)prominent topics; (2) abundant resources with authentic situation; (3) terse and forceful; (4) wide applied range; (5) flexible semi-structure; (6) powerful interactivity and easy operation.
As is widely acknowledged, microlecture is becoming a giant success all over the nation, and large quantities of microlecture researches, programs, especially competitions are appearing and booming. Statistically, the research paper on “microlecture” did not show up until the 2010s on China’s largest resource pool----CNKI(China national knowledge infrastructure) when there is an explosive growth. In the year of 2014, more than 2000 pieces of research papers were collected in the database. As to the microlecture competitions, the National Higher Education Instructional Microlecture Competition is a good example. On May 6th, 2013, there were 4721 competitors participating in its online platform, with more than 3000 pieces of work uploaded. Moreover, the platform received 493 schools’ registration, and these schools recommended 564 pieces of work after the preliminary screening. In terms of inpidual participants, Yuan junjun, from Nanjing, Jiangsu, has uploaded 191 microlectures on the official online website of China’s Microlecture Competition, ranking the first place in the total number of work submitted, followed by Liu yiyi from Guangzhou, Guangdong with 125 pieces of work. Nation-widely, here is a table collecting the important competitions and activities happened during 2012 to 2013 on microlecture.