An Exploratory Study on How Live Courses Reshape the Classroom Social Interaction of Primary School Students and Teachers in China

With the popularization of mobile terminals and the expansion of network bandwidth, live streaming has emerged into the public consciousness. As a powerful communication tool, live stream services encompass a wide variety of contents, from video game, E-commerce, social media to popstar image advertising. In addition, the field of K-12 education, which values real-time feedback and social interaction, provides live streaming with an excellent outlet to show its strengths. Online education solves a major problem of traditional face-to-face classes that the teacher resources are unevenly distributed through re-allocating the teachers with the help of high-speed communication networks. The recent upsurge of live streaming also happens in China. Some Chinese education companies have embraced this new and potentially profitable trend.

Though there are high hopes for the live courses in the modern business world, no one has a concrete proof of whether live courses benefit children’s social interaction and knows how it happens. This is because of the lack of feedback from the young users and their parents. Accordingly, it needs more exploration on the market acceptance of the families with children aged seven to twelve. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the acceptance of Chinese primary school children and their engagement in live courses. Furthermore, this study intends to show more insights to help filling above gaps by exploring the Chinese context, where the early business practices have already started. The core question of this research is that how Chinese primary school students socially interact in live courses.