“I was afraid, but now I enjoy being a streamer!’’: Understanding the Challenges and Prospects of Using Live Streaming for Online Education

The outbreak of COVID-19 has led to a sharp transition from offline to online education in many countries and areas. This transition heightens the intensity of existing challenges of online education, such as student attendance and education equality. During this time of uncertainty, the vast disparities in teachers’ online experience and technical backgrounds, students’ education level and their families’ economic status, and schools’ support, further pose new challenges to teachers and students. In this work, we study how Chinese teachers and students addressed challenges during this transition. We interviewed 15 teachers and 18 students from diverse backgrounds at varying education levels (K-12 and college). Our work makes timely and new contributions to the literature of online education. For example, our results showed that teachers applied Live Video Streaming (LVS) on multiple social media platforms and re-purposed different entertainment features to deliver online teaching for better student engagement; some teachers came to enjoy this new form of instruction after being resistant to it in the beginning; and students developed a better sense of intimacy with their teachers after experiencing certain online interactions. Our work also reveals the remaining challenges and prospects of LVS-based online education and sheds light on the future design of collaborative technologies for online education.