Analysis and appplication of Weixin in online interactive teaching

Xuan Zhang
Jiangsu Open University
Nanjing, China

While QQ and microblogs are in the ascendant, the meteoric rise of Weixin has provided another new powerful mobile phone app for online interactive teaching. With the popularity of WiFi and intelligent mobile phones, Weixin has gained 300 million registered users since it went online only two years ago; and it has been widely applied in various fields because of its superior transmission mode of node-to-node and node-to-surface. In this situation, some online education and training institutions have started to open public accounts for Weixin in teaching. However, the use of Weixin in online interactive teaching is still at an initial stage, and further study is needed on how to put its functions to full and proper use in the teaching process. For this reason, we have adopted an action research approach, combining with the characteristics of Weixin, to try out a variety of complementary and interactive designs for online teaching. This has involvedan in-depth exploration of the functions of amobile teaching service, and established multi-dimension channels for effective communication between teachers and students, and students and students. In this way, we could strengthen the emotional support and improve the quality of teaching. At the same time, it has been found that Weixin, QQ, microblog and other social media tools play very important roles in assisting and supporting online interactive teaching to a different extent. As Weixin and QQ are homologous, QQ is widely applied in China’s inland regions, whereas Weixin has more advantageous mobile phone application functions, which could lead learners to accept its teaching service relatively more easily — but the application of other social networking tools can also be included in their learning.