On 19 November 2021, the Department of Teacher Education of the Ministry of Education (MOE) held a meeting to promote the Wei County (Hebei) Pilot Project for AI-assisted Teaching Teams & "Two-teacher Class" reforms at the Open University of China (OUC).
Song Lei, deputy director of the department, presided, and Fan Xianrui, OUC vice president; Liu Xuanxuan and Wang Bingming, respectively director and deputy director of the department’s general section; Li Muming, a cadre in the OUC Teacher Development Department; and Yuan Yaxing, director of the OUC Information Technology Department, attended. The Hebei Provincial Department of Education, Xingtai Education Bureau, and Wei County People's Government participated via video link.
Fan Xianrui pointed out in her speech that the OUC, as a new IT-intensive university, supports lifelong education based on digital platforms, and in 2021 was named part of the MOE’s second selection of AI-assisted teaching-team pilot units. In the follow-up work, the OUC focused on enhancing the AI literacy of teachers, AI-based support, big data, reform of teacher evaluations, and so on, as part of the effort to build the teams. The OUC aims to coordinate units, establish an expert panel and a joint force to ensure that the project is implemented properly, deployed rapidly, promoted effectively, and successful.
The Hebei Provincial Department of Education, Xingtai Education Bureau, and Wei County People’s Government each reported on the progress and effectiveness of the “Two-teacher Class” reforms in Wei County, Hebei Province, the follow-up work, and remaining difficulties. They proposed promoting innovative integration of these reforms with the AI project in order to make Wei County a model for 832 low-income counties.
In his summary, Song Lei pointed out that the MOE has launched a pilot programme for building AI-assisted teaching teams, promoted the exploration of new technologies such as AI, big data, and 5G, and boosted the development of teaching-team reforms, on the basis of General Secretary Xi Jinping's views on education, the decisions of the Party Central Committee, and the challenges new technologies pose to those reforms. He emphasised the 2021 notice of the MOE on the second selections for the pilot programme at Peking University and 54 other universities, Beijing Xicheng District and 19 other districts or regions, and Wei County in Hebei and 24 other counties. The programme aims to grasp the new requirements and contents of the reform, follow new concepts, clarify new priorities, and focus on the main orientation. It has now entered a critical period in which strengthened implementation, collaborations, guidance, funding guarantees, supervision, and evaluation are needed to promote the AI-assisted teaching-team reforms in Wei County as well as the "Two-teacher Class" reform.
By He Yuanjing and Li Muming, OUC