"Who can help me with this tract calculus?”

"I’m a graduate student in engineering. I can help you if you have any problems in study.”

"I have a crop of questions. Help me…”

…

 

The exam week is approaching. The “Study” section of Zhejiang University campus forum cc98 is active. From time to time there will be students coming to talk about the problems they encounter in study.

 

On January 5, a new section was set up in cc98 where students can discuss their problems in study. Junior student Zhao Yuan of Department of Energy Engineering is the webmaster of the “Study” section on cc98. His idea of setting up a Q&A section has already offered help for more than 5000 students in study.

 

In this new section there are 7 subsections for Q&A in different disciplines including computer science, mathematics, physics (mechanics and civil engineering), humanities and social sciences, foreign language, circuit (information science) and medicine (biology and chemistry). Students can post their questions in relevant subsections. Zhao Yuan contacted Undergraduate School to involve more teachers in this project. According the current arrangements, teachers will answer students’ questions from 7 to 9 on each Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening. This piece of news attracted many students to post their questions in relevant subsections asking for advice from teachers.

 

Zhao Yuan introduced that in the past, teachers usually would offer a 2-hour Q&A session in the exam week. There are two major drawbacks in this, distance and limit in time. For example, teachers for courses such as calculus wouldn’t have enough time to answer the questions from each student. “Online Q&A section breaks the constraints in space and time and provides flexibility for communication between students and teachers.”

 

It was in 2008 that cc98 provided Q&A service for the first time. For the past 3 years, the effect was not ideal. Mostly the discussions were among students. This year, with the support from Undergraduate School and involvement of teachers, great improvements have been made.

 

"We put a post on the top to collect suggestions from students. In one day we had over 300 comments and more than 3500 votes based on which we submitted applications to Undergraduate School. They helped to contact teachers to offer online service.” Currently the most popular subsection is the one on mathematics and there has been a teacher responding to students.

 

"cc98 applies authentication procedures for teachers. For teachers already having cc98 accounts, it will publicly release their accounts in advance. For those without accounts, cc98 will offer new ones for them and release the information to the public.”