Abstract: 

The spread of the novel coronavirus at the start of 2020 shocked higher education across China then around the rest of the world. To ensure sustainability of learning, this required an unprecedented shift from campus-based to emergency online education. This created an urgent need to learn more about the quality of online education, the provision of global education, and the transformation potential of universities. This paper analyses these matters, presenting insights from large-scale research conducted on a leading Chinese university, the first ever major research university to make this substantial transition. This research applied a mixed methods design, which combines quantitative and qualitative approaches. The results provide important insight into the nature, quality, and outcomes of online learning in major Asian research universities. They signal critical areas that require reform to ensure the sustainability of future higher education.

Keywords: 

COVID-19; online education; education evaluation; higher education

Authors: 

Yang Liu, Yu Zhang, Weifeng Qiao, Lu Zhou, and Hamish Coates *

Institute of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; liuyang2019@tsinghua.edu.cn (Y.L.); zhangyu2011@tsinghua.edu.cn (Y.Z.); qiaoweifeng@tsinghua.edu.cn (W.Q.); zhoul19@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn (L.Z.)

* Correspondence: hamishcoates@tsinghua.edu.cn

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Liu, Y.; Zhang, Y.; Qiao, W.; Zhou, L.; Coates, H. Ensuring the Sustainability of University Learning: Case Study of a Leading Chinese University. Sustainability 202012, 6929. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12176929

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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