To further respond to UNESCO IITE Initiative “Combat COVID-19: Keep learning. Together we are on the move!” , the Open University of China(OUC) has continued to provide UNESCO with learning resources in Chinese and English to help with the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
After offering learning resources through the OUC’s cloud classrooms and Duoyutong platform(multi-language learning website)in the early stages, the OUC has again specially produced and translated 20 video resources in five fields into English, including videos on scientific epidemic prevention and artificial intelligence.
The OUC has actively responded to UNESCO’s call for online education resources for countries and students in need. On 25 March 2020, the OUC opened up its cloud classrooms and Duoyutong platform to the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (hereinafter referred to as IITE) and offered high-quality online learning resources covering scientific epidemic prevention, higher education, vocational education, primary and secondary education, social training, and language learning to users around the world, marking an initial step forward towards resource internationalisation.
In order to further expand the international influence of the OUC’s high-quality educational resources, the university endeavoured to provide video resources in English for IITE. This if beneficial to the internationalisation of the OUC’s learning resources, which, in turn, aids the enhancement of the university's international influence of the university and explores a new space for international cooperation and business development in the future.
In the future, the OUC will share China-basedcase studies about the social application of learning resources, education aided poverty alleviation, and special population education during the epidemic. It will further strengthen the international vision of the construction of learning resources, improve its abilityto identify and apply high-quality international learning resources, actively collect feedback and accumulate experienceduring the two-way exchange process, enhance its capacity to promote the internationalisation of learning resources,and use learning resources to providefoundational support for the construction of a world-class Open University.
According to UNESCO, as of 13 May 2020, 161 countries have closed their schools, and the number of students affected by the COVID-19 pandemic has exceeded 1.21 billion, accounting for 69.4% of the total number of students on campuses around the world.
By Hou Songyan and Wang Ran, OUC