TIANJIN, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- At 7:00 p.m., volunteer Ma Hongying, a law student of Nankai University in north China's Tianjin Municipality, made a video call to a 12-year-old girl and started their online tutoring.

Writing poems and learning Chinese idioms and English words, as well as sharing reading experience, they spend two hours studying together each day.

On Feb. 8, the university issued an initiative to recruit volunteers to offer one-to-one online tutorship or online courses for children of frontline medical personnel fighting against the novel coronavirus epidemic.

In less than two days, over 700 students including Ma answered the initiative.

Ma paired up with Xiaoqi, a sixth-grade primary schooler in Tianjin, after her mother Yu Guozhen, a nurse with the affiliated hospital of the university, was dispatched to central China's Hubei Province, the hardest-hit region by the coronavirus outbreak, to help treat patients there.

"In addition to helping with her homework, I also design some activities according to her interests and hobbies to improve the interaction between us," Ma said. "Accompanying their children might be the best gift I could offer for those heroic fighters."

"The volunteer offers thoughtful and considerate help to my daughter. I could rest assured when working on the frontline of the fight," Yu said.

Zhang Zihui is the volunteer tutor of Hanhan, a second-grade primary schooler in Tianjin. Her mother Xing Rui, an intensive care unit nurse, was sent to Hubei one month ago.

In her first online tutoring lesson, with Zhang's help, Hanhan wrote a letter to and drew a picture for her mother.

"I am very happy and deeply moved when I received the letter from my daughter," said Xing. "I was worried about her study at the beginning. The volunteer really helps a lot."

To date, over 300 volunteers from Nankai University have provided online tutoring services for about 1,800 students from 22 provincial-level regions in China.

Some volunteers have turned into "celebrities" after opening online courses for students.

Xue Bowen, a student of Nankai University, opens online geography classes for high school students. To make the courses more interesting and understandable, Xue creates some jingles, attracting more than 90 attendants at the "digital classroom."

"I am so happy that students love my courses. My efforts are not in vain," Xue smiled. "What I am doing is much less than what their heroic parents have done for us."