Introduction
Changes in the economy, society, higher education, and technologies have influenced open universities significantly.
In the face of such change, are our leaders capable of leading their people from the known into the unknown? The leaders of China's open distance education institutions, and the presidents of open universities, need four essential abilities: the ability to lead changes, the ability to make top-level decisions, the ability to drive an organisation forward, and the ability to promote collaborative development. In the context of an increasingly changing environment, the Open University of China (OUC) has carried out a series of reforms aimed at definite goal and vision: one world, multiple models. In light of the varied contexts of open universities in different countries and regions, discussions on a president’s leadership should be carried out at multiple levels, and from various angles, to realise mutual enlightenment and exchange.
This article is a keynote address made by Yang Zhijian, president of the OUC, at the 2016 international conference, Leadership and Innovation for the Future in Open and Distance Learning.”
I am honoured to be invited by the organising committee of this international conference, the 2016 Leadership and Innovation for the Future in Open and Distance Learning, to make my speech, entitled “Leading Reform in a Changing World.” The issue of leadership in the future of open and distance learning must be discussed in a global context. As a leader of an open and distance education institution in China, I will focus my understanding of future leadership in open and distance education in the context of conditions in China. I hope to exchange views on this with everyone.
Environmental Changes Raise New Demands for Leadership
An understanding of leadership in open and distance learning is similar to an understanding of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; different readers will have different understandings.
Leadership is a theoretical issue, with different interpretations between the East and the West. From a certain point of view, leadership is more a practical problem. It is a specific and targeted issue when placed in different contexts. When we look at leadership in open and distance learning, we must first consider changes that have occurred in a particular field. It is important to discuss leadership of open and distance learning in the context of a changing environment.
The changes in China's open and distance learning mainly occur across the following three aspects:
First, the economic and social environment in our country has changed significantly. In the past 30 years, China's economy has maintained rapid growth, becoming the world's second largest economic body, and successfully joining the ranks of the world’s developed countries. At the same time, living standards for ordinary people in China are improving, while their desire for spiritual pursuits is also increasing. We can see that when China's economic strength develops, structural adjustments and industrial transformations must also occur. The changes that have taken place in today's society are actually due to the transformation of the economic structure. Directly influenced by the economy, social transformations have occurred in both urban and rural areas. These are sociological topics, which I am not going to cover in detail. What I want to say is that these changes have changed the demand for education, and distance education in particular, from people in China. These issues are related to lifelong learning, the promotion of people's quality of life, and the well-being of ordinary people.
Secondly, changes in the environment of higher education. The changes can be explained by a set of figures. In 1999, there were only 7.18 million on-campus higher education Chinese students - that is an enrolment rate of 9%. After more than 10 years of development, the number of higher education students in China reached 40 million in 2016, a gross enrolment rate of 40%. In Shanghai, Beijing, and some developed coastal areas, the gross enrolment rate reached more than 50%. Although regional differences still exists within Chinese higher education development,in general, within a short period of ten years, China’s higher education has crossed three stages, from elite education to mass education, and finally to universal education - a very big leap indeed. The popularisation of higher education in such a short span has increased access to higher education, fundamentally improving educational equity. Of course, in the process of these great changes to higher education, some problems arose. To what extent have opportunities to increase access to quality higher education resources in rural, remote, and ethnic minority areas been realised? Are special special groups accepting diversified quality high education resources?
Finally, changes in technology. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Internet, cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things have penetrated into all areas of society. The popularisation of PC-based Internet use transformed into a mobile Internet just a few years ago. In 1996, China had only 620 thousand netizens. But by 2016, after 20 years, China’s mobile Internet users had reached 700 million. In 2012, the emergence of three MOOC class platforms in the United States intensified the trend of using the Internet to push forward educational reform. Benefited by the technological environment, the development of online education progressed. That digital tsunami spread across the globe, and its impact on China was apparent. In some traditional universities, various online teaching platforms such as Qinghua University Online and CNMOOC have emerged. Traditional universities are breaking through the educational barriers and carrying out open distance education. There has been a tendency to integrate online and offline education. In this context, the emergence of educational business opportunities caused many online educational enterprises, such as technology research and development providers, content providers, and a variety of operators, to enter the market. Data showed that, by the end of 2015, the number of Chinese online education enterprises had reached 9,500.
Changes in the economy, society, higher education, and technologies have influenced China's open universities significantly. But, what should an open university do? University presidents are worried. I believe you, the open university presidents sitting in this conference hall, whether from China or abroad, may feel the same way. This anxiety concerns facing the opportunities and challenges brought about by these changes. Certain past experiences and practices may not be well-suited to the present situation. At this point, personally I quite agree with the former U.S. Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, who said in his statement that, "The task of the leader is to get his/her people from where they are to where they have not been." That is to say, a so-called leader must lead his/her people from what they have known to what they haven’t known. The question, now, is whether our leaders have the abilities to lead their people from the known to the unknown, an issue of enhancing leadership quality.
Four essential leadership abilities
Regarding leadership, I will focus on the leadership at China’s open and distance learning institutions, and their presidents, who are supposed to have four essential abilities.
First, the ability to lead changes.
Adapting to a changing environment is a passive choice. However, future development needs active choices to change and meet changes with changes. Therefore, in a particular historical period, presidential leadership must involve the ability to lead changes. This entails the ability to cope with changes, meet challenges, and lead development, carried out through strategic, comprehensive planning, logical thinking, and innovation.
Secondly, the ability to make top-level decisions.
Change is a process of self-adjustment and forward development through the revision, perfection, and innovation of direction, goals, structure, mechanisms, and models. Therefore, presidents must also have strong top-level design ability, so they can make decisions according to the changing environment, discern direction, objectives, and key areas of reform, and make mid- to long-term reform plans and corresponding action plans for the university.
Thirdly, the ability to drive an organisation forward.
When top-level design is completed, the important task of the presidents is, through his/her authority, to conduct extensive mobilization within the university, earn support from the majority, and, in the process, build consensus and have others work toward the same direction. During that process, work must be done for mid-level leaders to strengthen their implementation abilities, and empower middle-level leaders from various departments to lead their subordinates to accomplish related tasks in their respective fields.
Fourthly, the ability to promote collaborative development.
The present conditions in open and distance learning have led to the formation of networks, sometimes tight, sometimes loose, between general colleges, universities, and open universities, between open universities themselves, and between open universities, related industries, and enterprises. In the face of an increasingly complex and changing environment, presidents must have a cooperative nature and matching abilities to lead reform, innovation, and the development of their university, and choose like-minded people to work together, cooperate with one another, and seek mutual development.
I believe that, in a changing environment, the core leadership in China's open and distance learning must have the four abilities mentioned above.
OUC’s Leadership Reform and Practices
To better illustrate the issue of leadership, I will take the OUC as a case study, and talk about how we have evolved in terms of development and reform in the face of rapidly changing environments in recent years.
The OUC began transforming in 2010. One sign was that the name of the university changed from the Central China Radio and Television University (CCRTVU) to the OUC. This is not a simple change of name, but the restructuring of the university’s mission, position, and objective, namely to promote lifelong learning, form a learning society, provide higher education opportunities for people, and promote equity in education, with particular attention to the educational needs of special groups. This was a big change. Emphasis was placed on simultaneous development of non-degree education, and the use of the Internet to promote open distance education.
Our open university is another type of university developing in a fashion complementary to traditional universities. We will advance a development means different from general colleges and universities. We will realise structural adjustment, recreate a development process, and operate a university that caters to the various needs in education, as Liu Yandong pointed out at the establishment of the OUC. We hoped all of society would believe in collaborative development based on a larger platform, work with various universities, institutions, and industrial organisations under a common will and according to the "five unified" operating mechanism: the unified brand, standard, platform, management, and evaluation. We further aimed to achieve the five principles of joint discussion, construction, management, possession, and mutual benefit, establish a community of school organisation, and work together to develop and implement open and distance education, with each body responsible for fulfilling its duties in a unique manner. This is the school operations system the OUC implemented.
OUC students are widely distributed, with some from the grasslands, islands, shopping malls, forests, and so on. How can we provide teaching services for these scattered students? If not network-based, it will not be possible to provide quality teaching service for the masses. With no quality guarantee, it is difficult to scale effectively. Therefore, we are exploring how to ensure quality namely a new learner development model that focuses on students and learning. I think a network-based learning space, courses, learner support, evaluation, teaching teams, and teaching management should be built, and that the six networks should be connected, supported, integrated, and become a six-network integration model. Only when the six networks are interconnected can a competitive and supportive entity be formed. The value orientation of the six networks is the promotion of scale, quality, and efficiency. In this process, education informatisation, and the integration of education with technology, both need further exploration. Six-network integration is the epitome of the deep integration of education and technology.
While we pay close attention to degree education, we also develop non–degree education. In recent years, we established an open university for the elderly. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Education and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, we have gathered a great deal of resources aimed to help migrant workers improve their learning through the "Realising Dreams of Further Education" project. We worked with the National Women's Federation to jointly develop the “Brilliant Life: A Lifelong Learning Plan for Women.” In order to ensure the smooth future development of the OUC, we launched comprehensive theoretical and comparative research, as well as the exploration of an institutional framework and practices, and built a lifelong learning bridge in the form of a credit bank, with the aim of connecting degree and non-degree education, and ensuring learning outcomes obtained in different ways will be transferable and certified.
The above-mentioned practices and explorations are reforms carried out in the OUC under a definite goal and vision in the face of an increasingly changing environment. One world, multiple models. In light of the varied contexts of open universities in different countries and regions, discussions on a president’s leadership should be carried out at multiple levels and from various angles to realise mutual enlightenment and exchange. I believe that this forum, by bringing together relevant personnel for collective discussions, will help promote the leadership of presidents at open universities, and bring about future development and innovation across the entire spectrum of open and distance learning.
By OUC