Weidong Cloud Education, a cloud-based education service provider based in Qingdao, Shandong province, has joined the Global Education Coalition launched by UNESCO to provide appropriate distance education for all learners.

More than 1.4 billion students around the world have been affected by school closures or suspensions due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The global coalition launched by UNESCO seeks to provide inclusive learning opportunities to children and youth during this period of sudden and unprecedented educational disruption.

It will push countries to invest more in remote learning to mitigate the immediate disruption caused by the outbreak to education and to develop more open and flexible education systems.

Weidong Cloud Education was one of the first enterprises to join the coalition, along with Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Coursera, Zoom and Moodle, to provide remote online education solutions for affected countries and schools. It is also the only participating Chinese enterprise.

The company will provide integrated education solutions in the form of infrastructure, digital equipment, distance education platforms, and ICT capacity-building training courses to UNESCO member states.

Since the beginning of the outbreak, Weidong Cloud Education has been providing distance learning solutions to nearly 10,000 educational institutions and schools throughout China, benefiting more than 10 million users. Many students in remote areas are also enjoying high-quality teaching services via its online education platform, said a senior director from the company.

The company has worked with the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO to launch its online "smart classroom" platforms in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, Egypt, and Djibouti and provide intelligent teaching tools and distance learning platforms to local colleges and universities.

"In the face of the ongoing epidemic, Weidong Cloud Education is committed to providing high-quality educational solutions and educational resources for the world. It will take concrete actions to help people around the world overcome the epidemic and work toward a shared future for mankind," said Wang Duanrui, president of Weidong Cloud Education.