Zheng Jipeng, a full-time teacher at the OUC Faculty of International Languages and Cultures, has been engaged in college English teaching for 20 years. He always keeps in mind his responsibilities as a teacher and devotes himself selflessly to education and his students, constantly improving himself and the cause that he is engaged in. He always finds a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in his daily work, which gives him the impetus to make further progress in his own field of expertise.
He entered the OUC at a time when the reform of the public foreign language curriculum was at the critical stage. He was faced with many tasks, such as the compilation of the new public English textbook series (16 courses for four series: English for the Humanities, Business English, English for Technology and Engineering, and Management English), teaching resource construction, teaching and auxiliary materials production, teaching document setting, systematic training for tutors, new curriculum promotion, and teaching practice reform exploration. In addition to these tasks, he was faced with a great deal of complex follow-up work for the original public English course (four courses for the open English series). He was the course leader for ten public English courses and also director of the Public Foreign Language Teaching Centre. During this period, he undertook a large amount of teaching work and organisation management work.
Dedicated to a large amount of regular teaching work. Hosting 10 courses makes for a lot of routine work but Zheng Jipeng performs well in daily teaching activities, online Q&A, test setting, teaching resource updates, assessment method reform, and final exam duty shifts. He has tried to actively improve teaching resources, such as recording 600 minutes of "one college student per village" English course video. In just four years, he has created more than 100 test papers and completed about 20 class hours of online teaching videos and midday live classes. He also actively supported the OUC Experimental School's English teaching work and taught Open English 3 for 36 weeks for three semesters, for a total of 108 class hours. His courses were highly praised by the students.
Earnestly participate in the compilation of public English textbooks. When Zheng Jipeng first entered the OUC, the compilation of public English textbooks was already under way. He completed the preliminary review of the teaching materials for six textbooks (including the Science and Engineering English textbook series 1, 2, 3, and 4 and English for the Humanities 2 and 4). He was in charge of the three rounds of revision for the paper textbook teaching and discourse, putting forward his suggestions for revision. He participated in the approval of textbooks for 10 courses, completing the revisions according to suggestions from the experts.
Organise the compilation of relevant teaching materials and teaching documents. Zheng Jipeng organised the public foreign language course leaders to improve the syllabus and textbook details for 16 public English courses. He formulated course descriptions, assessment instructions, formative workbooks, final review guides, paper test assessment instructions, and assessment instructions for online core courses. He undertook the corresponding work for six new courses of public English. He also revised the formative workbooks and the final review guide for Open English 1 and Open English 3 and completed the first round of editing for the formative workbooks and the final review guide for the courses. Thanks to his efforts, the teaching archives for the new public English course are sound and complete, with the teaching documents in place, and the teaching auxiliary materials are abundant. All of these preparations create the necessary conditions for the smooth development of the new public English course.
Overcome difficulties to ensure quality and quantity in the construction of teaching resources. At one time, there were usually only two tutors, four at most, available for the public English course. However, in order to meet the teaching needs and provide students with better learner support, Zheng Jipeng overcame various obstacles to organise and coordinate foreign experts and public English teachers to complete the recording of nearly 3,000 minutes of teaching materials. The copies of the lecturer recording agreements alone reached 150 (two to four foreign teachers per course, with the lecturer agreements completed in quadruplicate). He organised for experts inside and outside of the OUC to complete video recordings to serve as the teaching materials for 16 new public English courses, totalling about 300 class hours and 14,000 minutes of video recordings. He recorded about 2,200 minutes of these as the lecturer. Also, he completed the digital textbooks and network core course construction for all courses. The new public English course has become a business English course with a variety of learning resources such as recordings, video, digital textbooks, and online courses that can meet the diverse teaching needs of both teachers and students.
Work hard without complaint and undertake conference organisation and teacher training work. As director of the Public Foreign Language Teaching Centre, Zheng Jipeng has participated in backbone teacher training eight times over the past four years; organised a course conference for teachers in the OUC system five times; conducted ten sessions of professional curriculum reform reports; organised four sessions of teaching presentations and demonstration classes; presided over 15 sessions of academic lectures; participated in a professional seminar; reported on the new public English work to the principal and the school minister; and organised more than 60 validation meetings with experts. These meetings and trainings illustrated the reform of English teaching concepts to English teachers in the system and introduced them to the usage of new teaching resources and the exploration of new teaching models, addressing issues such as curriculum setup, teaching arrangements, and examinations and assessments.
Take the initiative to communicate, give meticulous feedback, and communicate effectively. In years when a new curriculum was introduced and the old curriculum was handed over, Zheng Jipeng spent a considerable amount of time discussing with branch teachers, students, the Learning Resource Department, the Academic Affairs Department, the Learner Support Centre, the Information Technology Department, the Publishing House, the Magazine, the Multi-Media Press, and foreign experts on teaching arrangements, review meetings, document promulgation, materials setup, archive improvement, job assignment, and overall arrangement. Through effective communication and active exchanges, everything progressed smoothly and all the issues were addressed in an optimal way.
Make an overall plan and take all factors into consideration, organise the teachers from the public English group to build more than 50 course teams. The work of Zheng Jipeng's team covers textbook translation, course propositions, course exchanges, and online core course team construction. He himself set up 16 teaching teams and was responsible for the selection of personnel, the formation of the team, the division of tasks, the formulation of working mechanism, and the proofreading and further feedback on the tasks completed by the team. During the process of video recording and online core course design and production, as well as the opening up of mobile digital teaching materials, he also set up or participated in various teams in order to learn the work progress, exchange ideas, solve problems, and complete tasks.
Actively participate in the teaching reform of schools and faculties. Since 2015, Zheng Jipeng has been engaged in the construction of OUC English grading system competency standards. In 2017, he served as the team leader for the multimodal teaching reform pilot group, conducting research, writing notification documents, forming pilot working mechanism, organising pilot work conference, and summarising and promoting the teaching reform experience. This helped teachers to leverage their work experience to promote themselves, reduced the burden of lesson preparation, and was conducive to repositioning the role of teachers. He actively participated in OUC degree English test work, engaging in and completing the examination outline, sample test setup, and resource preparation, so as to fully prepare for the pilot test of the degree English exam in the 2018 fall semester.
Brave enough to undertake and participate in the work of the school and the faculty. Zhang Jipeng has served as head of the faculty union, member of the Academic Committee, leader of the teaching pilot working group, and leader of the resource construction curriculum group. In 2015, he was elected as a representative of the 3rd OUC Teacher Congress and was elected as member of the Welfare Committee. He participated in Beijing Experimental School 2015 Spring Semester Opening Ceremony and Commendation Conference and delivered a speech as a teacher representative. In 2017, he was recommended as the representative of 5th MOE Trade Union. In June 2017, he was one of the professional judges for the 3rd College English Speaking Contest for college students in continuing education in Beijing. In October, 2017, he went to Canada to carry out an academic exchange. He gave an academic report on behalf of the OUC at Athabasca University. He wrote the OUC story entitled Reform of the Public English Course: A Language Feast for Students. In June 2018, he served as the general coordinator of the OUC English Speaking Contest.
Complement teaching with research and actively shift research focus. Zheng Jipeng strives to closely integrate scientific research with his own teaching work at the OUC. He has participated in one MOE Humanities and Social Sciences Fund Research Project; presided over and completed strategic research on the MOE's strategic topic of Chinese education internationalisation; presided over the China Adult Education Association 12th Five-Year Adult Education Research Plan 2015 Key Subject: The Construction and Development of the Educational Consultation Service System in the Open Education; presided over the OUC 2016 Key Subject "ESP Curriculum Reform and Teaching Design"; and presided over the China Association of Higher Education 13th Five-Year Plan project "Practical and Rational Research on the Application of Open University Education Technology.” He released three essays in core academic journals. He attended the 2016 work conference on OUC System Scientific Research and delivered the opening report as a host representative of the OUC system scientific research subject on behalf of the OUC. He also presided over the preparation of the World Open Universities Series - Open Polytechnic of New Zealand.
Be kind to others and be friendly with colleagues. Zheng Jipeng is always ready to devote himself to his work and is also willing to share with others. He accomplishes the various tasks assigned by the department leaders with an earnest attitude and is always ready to learn from the senior teachers. He also showed his sincerity with new comers and was ready to help them. As director of the Public Foreign Language Centre, he created a relaxed and friendly office atmosphere amid the heavy work. As a teacher at the OUC Headquarters, he formed good working relationships with branch teachers.
In 2015, he was rated as a 2014-2015 Beijing Experimental School Outstanding Instructor. In 2015 and 2016, he was named an OUC Advanced Individual. In 2017, he was named a China Adult Education Association 2nd Young and Middle-aged Academic Star. In 2018, he was recommended as a candidate for the MOE Pioneer of the CPC. The textbook Introduction to Portuguese was given an Award for Excellence in the 2017 China Foreign Language Non-Universal Language Excellent Research Achievements Textbook Category. When talking about the future, Zheng Jipeng says he is willing to go all the way and do his best to become a qualified OUC teacher.
By OUC Voice WeChat Official Account