The global outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 has considerably impacted Chinese society. According to the Ministry of Education requirements, all schools across China have conducted online teaching and learning. Such large-scale online education tests and reviews China's informatization and modernization of education. Currently, research on online education mainly focuses on constructivism, behavior, and cognition online and the knowledge management of online teaching and learning and technical support research (San & Min, 2014). However, there is controversy over whether online education can improve learning. Clark (1983) points out that the media, itself, does not affect learning. In addition, according to Man and Wei, in the fall semester of 2019, online teaching was nearly equivalent to traditional classroom teaching (Man & Wei, 2020). Therefore, there is no difference in the learning effect between online and in-person education, and there is no relationship between the learning effect and media application. 

There are two main views on the effectiveness of online learning. One idea is that online education during the outbreak has generally failed. Ru (2020) believes that schools across the country had to carry out emergency online education because of the uncertain duration of the outbreak. Online learning and teaching, which hastily started with insufficient experience and technology, went wrong, causing complaints from teachers and students. In addition, educational researchers have raised doubts about online teaching and learning. After reviewing the international literature on the effects of educational technology applications, Gang (2018) believed that educational technology did not have stimulating effects overall. Mang (2017) believes that information technology has not met its high expectations. He also hopes that non-educational technology professionals can understand educational technology from a philosophical perspective and guide technology and stakeholders to establish correct values instead of going to the extreme of technism, which fails to respond to the fundamental contradiction between education and technology and ignores the understanding of the nature of humanity and education (Mang & Dong, 2020).

On the contrary, the optimistic view is that online teaching and learning is the inevitable trend for education in the future, so attention and affirmation should be devoted to promoting education informationization and the modernization of power. Yong assumes that, for education informationization and network teaching, the global outbreak is an opportunity to promote reform (2020). Jun et al (2020) believe that the epidemic significantly improves the awareness of online learning. Hong et al. (2020) confirmed that professors' recognition of online teaching has improved compared to before the pandemic. 

The dispute between the two viewpoints is that they hold different value orientations about education. One believes that traditional in-person teaching and learning has its rationality and opposes radical educational reform. Another view is that the existing educational model can no longer meet the needs of today's technological and academic development, so digitalization and informatization reform must be carried out. Therefore, it is not very meaningful to discuss the effectiveness of online education separately, instead of recognizing that massive online education is valuable and has advantages and value. Furthermore, mass-online education under this epidemic is an orderly, mainstream activity subject to multiple conditions compared with in-person teaching and learning. Therefore, it has specific learning value and presents a brand-new teaching and learning ecology, which will likely lead to significant reform in modern pedagogy. Based on relevant theories, this paper analyses the characteristics and value of this large-scale online education from the educational place, evaluation method, and modes of teaching and learning. 

In face-to-face education, learning takes place almost entirely in the classroom. However, in the case of large-scale online teaching, the learning site is mainly at home and on the network. This means that the propagation of knowledge is no longer limited to teachers. It has the characteristics of social, situational, and distributed network transmission (Sheng, Gang, & Jing, 2009). Relying on a network to spread knowledge strengthens the possibility of educational equity. In some provinces, students from different schools and regions can be taught by the same teacher, which unifies educational resources and makes them fair. 

In-person teaching is limited by the mismatch between students' and teachers' resources, making personalized instruction impossible. However, relying on the intelligent equipment of online teaching, learning forms can be personalized and diversified. A variety of materials provide students with various learning resources, while various intelligent data statistics and computing tools can accurately analyze students' online learning behavior patterns and habits. These provide data support for satisfying students' personalized learning. 

With the development of technology, evaluations are no longer limited to results. A new adjoint evaluation has been realized. Online adjoint evaluation can be embedded in the learning process, including data-based and technology-supported evaluations (Feng, Jiqing, 2018). This evaluation method includes the time of the study, frequency of learning, participation in discussions and completion of tasks. These results enable teachers to grasp the learning dynamics of learners in time and make personalized and objective assessments of students' learning with the help of big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies. 

In in-person teaching and learning, learners and teachers can sort out knowledge and deepen their understanding of learning content through communication and discussion. However, in online education, due to limitations in the network transmission of space, the time for communication and debate is reduced, as the opportunity for learners to think independently is increased. This is conducive to improving learners' independent thinking ability from psychological cognition. To meet the requirements of online education in the context of the epidemic, large-scale online teaching and learning across the country has networked and personalized characteristics and solves the problem of face-to-face teaching to a certain extent. Nonetheless, the challenges should be realized. 

Full text available: Xu, B., & Margeviča-Grinberga, I. (2022). LARGE-SCALE ONLINE LEARNING SUPPORTED BY INTELLIGENT DEVICES IN THE POST-PANDEMIC ERA. SOCIETY. INTEGRATION. EDUCATION. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference, 1, 572-583. https://doi.org/10.17770/sie2022vol1.6850