The first semester of 2020 was taken mostly online for Konkuk University students due to COVID-19. Since COVID-19 had been a widespread problem all over the world, the Korean government recommended an order to all universities to forbid face-to-face classes. Instead, students took online classes in their homes. The students council conducted a survey about online classes to find out students’ opinions of these classes and then pass this information on to KU. There were comments that online classes were confusing and because some professors rarely had dealt with this type of system, the quality of online classes was low. Furthermore, students who had hands-on or practical classes said it was unfair since they had paid high tuition fees for what turned out to be online classes. To improve the quality of education and also diffuse the risk of COVID-19 infection, KU decided to have blended teaching approach. In other words, students are having some face-to-face classes and some online classes this semester. In addition the criteria for selecting face-to-face classes depends on the number of students who take the class.

For the theory classes, they are taken both offline and online classes if the number of students is under 50 students. For example, if one class takes three hours, 90 minutes would be run in face-to-face and the other 90 minutes would be run in online. On the other hand, theory classes which have over 50 students should have classes only online. Students have to search for previous year’s classes’ number of students because that is the standard of this year’s number of students. Students should check whether the class accommodates under or over 50 students.

As for the practical classes along with theoretical contents, offline and online classes are blended. This means they will be conducted the same way as the theory classes which has under 50 students. Classes with experiments, exercises, and practices will all be face-to-face. Moreover, students will follow the further instructions from professors and will be assigned a seat at intervals of two meters to prevent the infection.

The 2nd semester runs for 15 weeks without a midterm period. The final exam should be taken face-to-face, but online exams are also possible. Classes started on August 31 and scheduled to finished on December 1. Unlike last semester, grades will be assessed in a relative evaluation form.

Due to the widespread of COVID-19 in the beginning of the second semester, government recommeded an instruction to universities to stop offline courses at least for 2 weeks. Therefore, KU followed the instruction and decided to have online classes for 2 weeks. However, situation didn’t got better thus KU extended the online course period to week 3.