Editor's Notes: The Open University of China (OUC) has initiated a programme to nurture candidates for the inaugural session of "Outstanding Young Teachers," resulting in 104 teachers being bestowed with the esteemed title of "OUC Outstanding Young Teachers."
By sharing the stories of some of these young teachers and highlighting their experiences of learning and personal growth, our aim is to showcase the dedication and enthusiasm of all OUC teachers who are devoted to contributing to the establishment of a lifelong learning society for all.
Xu Hang, Master of Arts, graduated from Space Art Design department of L'Ecole supérieure d'art et de design de Valencienn. She is currently the deputy director of Art Project Operations centre of School of Art, the OUC; head of Interior Art Design. Currently, she presides over five courses, such as Interior Art Design major, Calligraphy major, etc. She is the head of the course teaching team. In 2022, she was awarded the title of “OUC Online Teaching Star”. In 2017, the “SketchUp Interior Design” course which she participated in, was listed as MOE’s “National Premium Online Open Course”.
Doubts of an Open Education Teacher
Since I entered the Open University of China (OUC) in 2010, I have accumulated some experience in building learning resources. However, as time goes by, I have become more and more aware of the problems I have in my work. One of the most confusing things to me is "how to design a good online course". As the OUC headquarters attaches great importance to online courses and online teaching team construction, I gradually shifted the focus of my work from resource construction to the teaching process. In autumn, 2015, I participated in the initial work of the online teaching team, which allowed me to understand, for the first time, the relationship between static course resources and dynamic teaching process, and made me realise that many of the course resources I had designed before hardly met the needs of the learners.
Seek Answers from Learning
I was fortunate to be selected for the first session of OUC Outstanding Young Teachers Training Programme. During my nearly two years of study, I attended different kinds of online courses in different forms and different lengths of time, which allowed me to observe how a good online course should be designed from a learner's perspective.
What makes a good online course? It can generally be measured in terms of both the effectiveness of course learning and student satisfaction. As a student, I mainly observe the online courses I have taken, in terms of course content design and instructor’s learning support services, to find the direct impact of different methods of course content design, the presence or absence of instructor's learning support services, and the timeliness of feedback regarding online learners.
On the whole, the learning experience and the learning effects of courses presented with resource-presentation and indoctrination lectures are not satisfactory. In this learning process, students lack interaction with the content, and teachers do not provide corresponding learning support services. Although the course contents are attractive, the lack of interaction makes the learning process boring.
The online practical courses have solid learning effects, and the content of the "Environmental Facilities Design" course that I took is based on design practice. The assessment includes not only objective questions, but also design case studies, research reports and design projects, etc. This online course is closer to the art and design courses that I am responsible for in open education, and the learning tasks are also very similar. Through learning, I feel that the high-frequency and interactive teacher-student interaction in art practice courses can help learners improve their learning effects and get a satisfactory learning experience.
The two courses with the most satisfactory learning experience and the best learning effects were "How Teachers Do Research" on the Chinese University MOOC Network and "Online Tutor Training Programme" jointly organised by the University of London and OUC.
These positive online learning experiences have encouraged me to reflect on the design of the courses and the teaching process that I am responsible for. Through the online learnings of the OUC Outstanding Young Teachers Training Programme, I feel that the continuing education of open education teachers cannot be detached from practice, and that purely theoretical lectures or experience sharing are not sufficient enough to improve understanding and competence, but should be combined with practice.
Transformation from Learning Outcomes to Teaching Practice
During the training period of the OUC Outstanding Young Teachers Programme, the Art Education Centre (the OUC Painting and Calligraphy Art Education Research Institute and the OUC Your Arts Network), Faculty of Humanities, which I am responsible for, started trying out the operation of short-term non-degree online arts courses. Compared with degree programmes, non-degree programmes feature more flexible curriculum designs, higher autonomy of host teachers and flat teaching team composition. Therefore, applying what I have learned about course content design, learning activities and teaching support services to non-degree online art programmes has become the first step to transfer my learning outcomes into teaching practice. My work experience in non-degree programmes further encouraged me to integrate my learning outcomes into the curriculum design of degree education. In the designing of professional courses, I changed my thinking of assessment design, which was more concerned with the design of formative assessment, and attempted to break up various types of learning activities and assessments and inserted them into each individual learning unit, so that learners can interact with the course content immediately after finishing each section to optimise the online learning experience.
Addressing One Problem in Three Years
With the question of "how to design a good online course", I began a three-year learning journey, during which there were doubts and gains, and I believe that the efforts I made, will ultimately be transformed into "a good online course".
By OUC News Network