The aim of this programme is to cultivate graduates in line with the national standards for graduates of higher normal universities, and adapted to the needs of reform and development in modern socialist construction ideologically, intellectually and academically. It also aims to cultivate high-quality and practical professionals with the competence and ethics to fill positions in mathematics teaching, teaching management, and other mathematics-related jobs.
I．Requirements and Training Objectives
Requirements
Open education undergraduate programme (starting from a junior-college diploma), minimum 1.296 credit hours and 72 credits, 8 years of part-time studies permitted, and the shortest period lasting at least 2.5 years.
Training Objectives: the aim of this programme is to cultivate graduates in line with the national standards for graduates of higher normal universities, and adapted to the needs of reform and development in modern socialist construction ideologically, intellectually and academically. It also aims to cultivate high-quality and practical professionals with the competence and ethics to fill positions in mathematics teaching, teaching management, and other mathematics-related jobs.
II. Course System
The programme includes nine modules: ideological and political education, public English, public foundation courses, specialised foundation courses, specialised courses, specialised development courses, general-study courses, comprehensive-practice courses, and supplementary courses. The main courses cover mathematical analysis, advanced algebra, foundations of geometry, functions of complex variables, ordinary differential equations, methods of calculation, teaching and research of middle-school mathematics, applied probability and statistics, elementary number theory, functions of real variables, mathematical modeling, professional ethics for teachers, and other areas.
III. Teaching Team and Course Resources
Excellent teachers from regular institutions of higher education are employed as editors-in-chief of teaching materials and video-class lecturers for each specialized compulsory course. All have senior professional titles, and are mainly from Northeast Normal University; they include Professor Gao Hang, editor-in-chief and lecturer for Mathematical Analysis, and Professor Fan Meng, lecturer for Ordinary Differential Equations.
Inside the national open-university system, the Mathematics and Applied Mathematics programme currently employs 381 tutors, including 294 full-time and 87 part-time, mainly from local regular universities, and employed in study centers. Of the full-time teachers, 170 have senior professional titles, including 23 professors. The headquarters have seven full-time teachers, three with senior professional titles, including four professors.
Teaching teams exist for each of the compulsory courses in the major, and are made up of course leaders from the OUC headquarters, course coordinators from the branches, and tutors from the study centres. They work together to provide students a wide variety of support services. Among them, the team for Discrete Mathematics was named the “2013 Excellent Teaching Team of Continuing Education in Beijing Higher Education”, while the team for Fundamentals of Economic Mathematics, which works on public basic courses, was designated a “High Level Teaching Team of Continuing Education in Beijing Higher Education” in 2019.
The degree-course resources developed for the programme include printed teaching materials, audio-visual materials, online courses, IP courseware and micro courses. Learning is supported in an all-round way. Several high-quality public mathematics and specialised mathematics course resources have been produced. Fundamentals of Economic Mathematics, compiled by Li Linshu, was included in the 11th Five-year National Textbook Plan for general higher education, while Calculus, Linear Algebra and Linear Programming, Probability and Mathematical Statistics, Fundamentals of Mathematics in Higher Education, and Fundamentals of Economic Mathematics (4th Edition, Books I and II), compiled by Li Linshu, Gu Jingxiang, Zhao Jian and others have been included in the 12th Five-Year National Textbook Plan for vocational education. Fundamentals of Economic Mathematics was named a national-level online “quality resource-sharing course” in 2013, while Fundamentals of Economic Mathematics and Discrete Mathematics were named online “national exquisite courses” in 2008.