The sixth session of the Open University of China’s (OUC) Competition of Best Teacher’s Paper in Economics and Management, which received more than 300 papers, has ended, with 108 papers winning final awards.
This event was aimed at implementing the concept of “developing a university based on teaching quality”, deepening educational and teaching reform, improving the quality of learner development, and helping teachers teaching economics and management in the OUC system to innovate teaching ideas and enhance teaching quality, so as to continuously improve their teaching and scientific research level. The event has been held six times since 1997. The award winning theses were of a high academic standard and demonstrated the outstanding teaching and scientific research achievements of the teachers teaching economics and management in the OUC system recently.
For this year's event, there were six stages of evaluation: sending notices, staff recruitment, first selection, primary review, plagiarism check, and final review. The Faculty of Economics and Management notified the whole system in May 2017, clarifying the purpose of the event and the specific requirements for the thesis. In June, a two-way video staff meeting was held in the Wukesong campus’s cloud classrom. Liu Chen, OUC vice president, Ye Zhihong, director of the Academic Affairs Department, Wang Ying, director of the Research Management Office, Rehati, vice director of the Learning Resources Department, and Liu Zhimin, director of the Faculty of Economics and Management, along with relevant teachers and staff from the teaching departments, attended the meeting. At the beginning of September, the first round of thesis selection was carried out and 286 articles qualified in accordance with the specification. From 20th September to 10th October, the Faculty of Economics and Management organised 22 experts to review the theses. Each group of papers was presented to the experts anonymously. For each group, there were two experts to rate the theses based on a hundred percentage grading system. Afterwards, the CNKI database conducted a plagiarism check. On 30th October, 14 experts in related fields were engaged. An expert panel composed of experts from general colleges and universities, and the OUC’s branches and headquarters was set up. Evaluation was conducted and the papers were categorised into different awards groups.
During the final review period, Liu Chen, vice director of the organising committee of the evaluation, pointed out that the evaluation was an important part of the construction of the OUC’s teaching team. Firstly, the OUC is currently at a critical stage of improving its teaching quality and reforming the teaching of its majors. Theses appraisal standards should be strictly implemented and the quality of evaluation strictly controlled. Secondly, evaluation should play a leading role in academic research into teaching. Thirdly, during the evaluation, attention should be paid to a variety of different areas, the proportion of theses from the headquarters, branches, schools, and study centres, and problems such as the number of theses with the same topics and the rate of plagiarism.
The experts attending the meeting also put forward the following opinions: The subjects of the theses in distance education should be defined within a narrow scope, with a focus on teaching and academic research about the economics and management majors and their courses. A thesis evaluation event should be operated systematically on a regular basis, which will help teachers in the system to carry out teaching practices help them prepare their theses. At the same time, training on how to write academic papers should be developed and detailed requirements, including abstracts, keywords, and references, should be given.
By Yan Xiaohui, OUC