For most high school students, teachers, and parents, how to smoothly connect high school and university learning is a very important issue. With digital technology gradually becoming widespread, this problem has been gradually solved. The “Alliance for Empowering Smart Future—Sustainable and Cultivated Digital Learning” led by Tamkang University recently won 6 awards at the “2024 ELOE Digital Learning International Symposium and Open Education Forum,”. Its MOOC courses phase II, will soon be available on the Ministry of Education’s guided learning course website, offering diverse online learning content that is particularly helpful for high school students to get early exposure to university courses and lay the foundation in related disciplines. Relevant information can be found on the course webpage (website: https://moocs.moe.edu.tw/moocs/#/home).

Professor Tzong-Ru Tsai, Dean of Academic Affairs, explained that alliance schools have planned a series of online MOOC courses, using progressively structured teaching content paired with timely assessments to help learners overcome the learning difficulties caused by distance and improve learning outcomes. “The courses are all based on university foundational subjects, with instructors specially arranging the learning from a beginner’s perspective, which is very suitable for high school students’ transitional learning; furthermore, a cohesive learning approach is adopted, with each short segment accompanied by tests, not only to confirm the learners’ level of understanding but also to prevent shortcutting, thereby making the course certification more credible.”

Prof. Tsai further pointed out that Tamkang University actively assists high school students in the strategic alliance connecting to university courses. In addition to frequently arranging for departmental teachers to go to high schools to assist with joint lesson preparation and teaching based on high school needs, efforts are also being made how to collaborate with high schools under limited teaching manpower and time, to meet high school cooperation requests as much as possible, utilize existing resources, and maximize effectiveness, creating a win-win situation for both high schools and universities. Tamkang University already has a complete infrastructure and achievements in cloud campus, agile communication, and online teaching, combined with short course design. “These issues have been solved to a considerable extent after the launch of the online MOOC courses, and also better meet the needs for autonomous learning by students, allowing high schools to, based on their own needs, introduce teachers’ courses or provide students with flexible learning channels, so that high school students have the opportunity to engage in broader and more diverse learning, without being limited by time.”