A villager sells straw products through livestreaming in Binzhou, East China's Shandong Province on Sunday. The city has been actively exploring straw-related products and adjusting the agricultural industry's structure to increase local farmers' incomes and revitalize the rural economy. Photo: cnsphotos

A course called "We Media Promotion and Operation" launched by the Communication University of Zhejiang became a hot topic on social media recently after one of its students became a trending influencer just in order to get a passing grade. 

Though the course is an elective, it sets quite a challenging standard for passing: accumulate 10, 0000 fans online during the semester. Besides this, there are six other goals to achieve such as making it on the trending list at least once or creating content that gets more than 10,000 likes. 

The student who rose to prominence on one of China's most well-known short video streaming platforms, Sun, seems like he will ace the course as he achieved the goal of getting 10, 0000 fans in only 15 days.    

Not only did Sun lose 5.4 kilograms over those more than two weeks, he constantly had to deal with the pressure and fear that he was not doing enough. 

"Such circumstances will increase students' desire for quick success and may lead them to look for subjects that will enable them to quickly earn fans. This actually speaks to a major problem in We Media that needs to be solved," Xiong Bingqi,  director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, told the Global Times.  

In his streaming room, the young man earns likes using his street dance talents. He has been above board with fans by telling them that he is only there to pass the university course. Above his station is a small board that reads: "Selling talent, not asking for pity. Please everyone subscribe." 

"Though he says he isn't trying to incite pity, this can't be separated from why he has earned so many fans. Streaming is about your uncanny stories and your personality; not all street dancers can get fans," Sommi Yun, an online influencer in Hangzhou, told the Global Times. 

While some netizens have called the course "practical social experience for students," others reckon that some "side issues" are sure to appear considering that such high goals are part of the course criteria. 

"What if the students take the wrong approach to achieving these goals, like fabricating data. This cannot fully demonstrate their performance in the course," Chu Chaohui, a research fellow at China's National Institute of Education Sciences, told the Global Times. 

"A more comprehensive rating system should be established to evaluate a student's performance," noted Chu.

In line with the Chu's view, Xiong emphasized that educational reform and innovation are worth encouraging, but such courses need to have clear teaching objectives and ideas based in science.