1 JULY, 2020 - On behalf of the South Korean education sector, KERIS shared Korea's experiences and insights on the recent school semester that was conducted online due to the COVID-19.
The discussion took place as part of the "8th Special Webinar on COVID-19 for Policy and Technology Sharing" held on 1 July, 2020. Hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and organized by Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), the webinar focused on the theme of "Korea's Science, ICT and Education Policies & Practices." In this context, KERIS participated on behalf of the education sector, sharing Korea's online experiences of the last 4 months.
Dr Jinsook Kim, Director of the Education Service Division, shared the overall progress of Korea's response towards the unprecedented school closures and learning interruption. In particular, Dr Kim shared the overall development process of the public learning portals operated by KERIS. Furthermore, she explained Korea's systematic preparation in four aspects - establishment of infrastructure, development of content, distribution of digital devices and Internet, and implementation of teacher capacity-building trainings. The four aspects, according to Dr Kim, have been fulfilled by an intimate collaboration between Ministeries and professional orgnizations. For example, the Ministry of Science and ICT's "Zero-rating policy (exemption of data consumption)" for students accessing public educational resources was an essential support policy which successfully brought all learners to the virtual classroom.
In addition, Dr Kim suggested the need to regard distance education, not as a temporary substitute to primary and secondary leraning, but as an alternative to achieving future education. To this aim, she pointed three essential pillars of Korea's distance education - basic infrastructure for improved accessibility, enhanced digital lliteracies for all, and the "education for all" philosophy aimed at bridging the potential gap among the various stakeholders in the learning community (students, teachers, staff, parents, etc.)
Meanwhile, the 8th webinar shared experiences and insights in the area of science and ICT (Director Chungwon Lee, Ministry of Science and ICT), analysis and therapy development of COVID-19 (Director Dave Lee, Seegene Institute of Future Technologies and Mr Wangshick Ryu, CEO of Institut Pasteur Korea & Professor of Yonsei University).
