From 3-4 December 2019, the Open University of China (OUC) and the publicity department of the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) jointly organised the 2019 Brilliant Life: A Lifelong Learning Plan for Women training class in Beijing.

Cai Shumin, secretary of the ACWF Secretariat and a member of the ACWF Leading Party Members’ Group, and Liu Xianghong, deputy secretary of the OUC Party Committee and secretary of the OUC Discipline Committee, attended the opening ceremony and gave speeches. About 70 people attended the training class, including relevant leaders and responsible personnel from women’s federations, the OUC branches, and local open universities from the 27 pilot cities engaged in Brilliant Life: A Lifelong Learning Plan for Women. The opening ceremony was chaired by Zhu Xiaozheng, a Level I Counsel from the ACWF publicity department. Those present at the opening ceremony included people in charge from the education division of the ACWF’s publicity department and the relevant OUC departments.

Liu Xianghong indicated that more than three years of fruitful pilot practice by the ACWF and the OUC has shaped an innovative work model. The learning plan has benefitted nearly 500,000 registered female learners in the pilot cities and achieved good results across society. She underlined that it is the OUC’s responsibility to put into effect the three major development strategies to complete the women’s lifelong learning plan and to serve women’s overall development. The OUC will coordinate the strength of its educational organisation system nationwide, leverage its operational advantages, and solve specific problems during the course of development, such as the continuous updating and the effectiveness of systematic technological platform services and offline activities, and the creation of a smooth channel between non-degree education and degree education. Positive efforts are being made to explore new patterns and new mechanisms, to focus on the grassroots, and to promote the new stage of the project.

Cai Shumin emphasised that the implementation of Brilliant Life: A Lifelong Learning Plan for Women puts into effect the guiding principles of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speech in his collective talk with the members of the ACWF’s new Leading Party Members’ Group and the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. It is an effective way of leading the majority of women to establish lifelong learning habits and to promote women’s all-round development. It is a major focus for the women’s federation to improve its mass work ability and to lead women on an ideological and political level. In the future, we will further enhance the ideological and political leading of women by unswervingly adhering to the correct political direction; we will innovate and extend various degree and certificate education projects by focusing on the need to establish a system to improve women’s overall development; we will further enrich and improve course resources by focusing on what women need; we will increase positive public perception by keeping pace with the development requirements of the times; and we will shape an overall work pattern by coordinating the advancements of the headquarters, branches, and local open universities.

The training class aimed to summarise the experience of the three-year pilot project and to promote the in-depth development of the learning plan around the three dimensions of “ideology leading,” “quality improvement,” and “successful growth.” Themed experience exchange and sharing, themed lectures, group discussions, and learning visits were arranged during the training class. Wang Qifu, dean of the OUC School of Vocational Education and Training, gave a general report on the progress of the three-year pilot on behalf of the project group. So far, the women’s learning platform (www.womenxiangxue8.com) and its app have created four sections including literature, health, marriage, and parenting, and more than 90,000 minutes of audio-video resources have been developed. Several good-quality columns have been created, including “Hainan Happy Families” and “Beautiful Women, Happy Families.”

Guided by formulating an educational system that serves lifelong learning for all, as well as the systems and mechanisms to promote women’s overall development proposed at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, several topics were designed for the training class, such as “how to leverage the characteristics and strengths of the project to provide institutional support for women’s overall development,” “how to offer targeted learning support for different groups of women via the online platform,” “how to formulate a mechanism to build, share, and continuously update the course resources,” and “how to strengthen topic design and activity guidance to increase activity and repeat visit to the platform and expand its influence.” Speeches were made on behalf of Beijing, Mianyang, Fushun, and other pilot cities that have been involved in extensive discussions and exchanges on measures, results, and experiences with local conditions and characteristics.

Three experts were invited to give themed reports to the training class. Zhang Cong, deputy editor in chief of “xuexiqiangguo” (xuexi.cn) and director of the Learning Management Section of the Research Centre for Publicity and Public Opinions from the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee have a systematic introduction to the development experience of “xuexiqiangguo” in terms of platform and content, and offered important insight into how to promote learning to lead ideology and politics with media convergence. Liao Shijian, vice president of Read at Ten and responsible person for Class at Ten, introduced “how to choose a good topic: value proposition of the course of communication”, “how to move customers: make users remember,” and other experiences under the general topic of “create popular courses and establish a complete closed loop of course marketing” based on the practical experience of developing several courses with more than 100,000 paid users for Class at Ten. Xie Haobo, a lecturer at the Faculty of Education and a researcher at the Capital Institute of Learning Society, Beijing Normal University, interpreted the formulation of an educational system to serve lifelong learning as proposed at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and gave specific suggestions on how to promote women’s overall development through lifelong learning. The students in the training class also visited Baidu for live experience and discussions on the development and application of artificial intelligence technology.

The students said that the training class was rich in content, had many diverse formats, and was extremely effective. Zhang Jianli, deputy director of the Publicity Department of Xining City Women’s Federation, indicated that the sharing of excellent experiences from other pilot cities would be of significant reference in the next stage of their work. Xie Li, deputy dean of the Training School of Sichuan Radio and TV University, indicated that all the students had broadened their minds and gained fruitful achievements from the discussions, the lectures given by the experts, and the visit to Baidu.

In 2020, Brilliant Life: A Lifelong Learning Plan for Women will focus on the three tasks of ideological guidance, quality improvement, and successful growth by closely following the ACWF’s work objective of “leading, serving, and contacting women” under the guidance of the target to formulate an educational system to serve the lifelong learning for all put forward at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. It will strive to constantly meet the needs of women, fully demonstrating the OUC’s social responsibility and value.

By Zhang Xiaoying, OUC