A report about an IMO masterclass in China in times of Covid 19.
In May of 2019, the 2nd IMO Horizontal Masterclass was launched in Beijing. Forty participants joined the program. It was planned to be finished in August 2020. After finishing the third module in December of 2019, the Covid 19 came unexpectedly. Alexander Schwedeler (Germany) and Weiping Yan (New Zealand) could not come to Beijing for the on-site training. They offered online programs each month for the participants, hopefully the Covid 19 would be gone quickly. When there was no possibility to do the program as usual, the organizer of the program, Yuchun Weng and Frank Zhong, together with Alexander and Weiping, decided to deliver the program by combination of online and offline. Alexander and Weiping were online to deliver the content and the participants got together on the site. Teaching assistants (TA) were on the site to facilitate the entire process.
The fourth module and fifth module were delivered in the same way. The technical support, translation and TA actively work together to make it happen. It was new for us, however we pass it and gained a valuable experience.
The last module was scheduled in January, 2021 and the Covid 19 came back again. Gathering became impossible. It was decided to do it online. Was it possible to do it online for a full day? How to hold people’s attention? The good process made it a beautiful ending. It was an impressive ceremony to everyone who attended.
The process was like this:
- Each participant spoke for about 12 minutes to present his/her leadership development in masterclass.
- The participants were divided into 3-person group to share what you had learned from his/her presentation for 6 minutes.
- When everyone came back to large group, the first 3 participants who put up hands could express compliments/appreciations/merits to the speaker. It was a seeing moment, very warm and touching.
- At last, all the participants sent love and greetings to the participants by gestures. It was received by heart even through the screen.
Here special appreciation to Alexander who made all this happen with his extra contribution. Due to time difference, he got up at 2:00 am in Germany (9:00 am in Beijing) and began to work professionally. He did this for the last two modules with each module 3 days. We greatly appreciate his efforts and respect him very much.
