Busan Metropolitan Office of Education, Self-Driven Academic Change ... Expansion of 'Busan-Style Online Lectures'

Comprehensive Review of High School Year 1 and New First Semester Course Created

Middle School Year 1 Course Also Available Starting May

The Busan Metropolitan Office of Education will expand the distribution of the ‘Busan-type Online Lectures,’ which were previously offered only for the second semester of the first year of high school, to cover all semesters of the first year in both middle and high schools.

The ‘Busan-type Internet Lectures,’ which have played a significant role in enhancing high school students’ self-directed learning abilities, reducing educational disparities between regions, and lowering private education expenses, will now be available to first-year middle school students as well.

Launched nationwide in September last year as the first public education online lecture, the ‘Busan-type Online Lectures’ consisted of 156 sessions covering subjects such as Korean, Mathematics, and English for the second semester of the first year of high school, along with explanations for the nationwide joint academic assessment, and 69 short-form contents, all utilized by students for self-directed learning.

The Busan Office of Education has begun expanding the distribution of online lectures to further strengthen students’ in-depth subject learning and self-directed study, aiming to realize an ‘Academic Change.’

For the first-year high school online lectures, two additional courses, ‘First Year High School Comprehensive Review’ and ‘First Semester,’ have been newly produced and have been available since the start of the school year in March.

The two added courses consist of 150 lecture sessions and 30 short-form contents covering three subjects: Korean, Mathematics, and English. As a result, the high school online lectures now include a total of 306 lecture sessions and 99 short-form contents, enabling students to study the entire first-year curriculum.

In particular, to simultaneously address disparities between and within regions, the Busan-type Online Lectures, which last year were only available to first-year high school students in the old downtown and western Busan areas, will be expanded this year to include all general high schools in the Busan area.

Additionally, the Busan-type Online Lectures will be linked with the ‘Unit School Academic Competency Enhancement Support Project’ and utilized as an after-school program. This is to increase the utilization of the lectures so that they can be firmly established in on-site educational activities.

The after-school program linkage can be operated in three types: ▲subject study groups ▲self-directed learning groups ▲learning support teams. These types were extracted by monitoring last year’s operation results, and each school can operate at least one type depending on its circumstances.

Alongside this, the first-year middle school courses will also be newly operated. Starting in May, 120 lecture sessions covering three subjects?Korean, Mathematics, and English?for the first semester will be provided. In September, for the second semester, 200 lecture sessions covering five subjects including Science and Social Studies will be prepared.

As with the high school courses, textbooks currently being produced will be distributed, and the target academic years will be expanded sequentially.

Ha Yun-su, Superintendent of the Busan Metropolitan Office of Education, stated, “Our office will operate the Busan-type Online Lectures with substance to surely realize the academic change that students achieve on their own. We will continue to lead changes in public education through meticulous learning support tailored to students’ growth stages.”