On 3 December 2021, an instructional-design competition for curriculum-based ideological and political education was held at the Open University of China (OUC) in Beijing. The competition was for English teachers, and held both online and offline, with 20 teachers and teaching teams from 18 OUC branches winning awards, and over 1,200 participants attending online.
Fan Xianrui, vice president of the OUC, and Zheng Jipeng, vice dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages, delivered speeches, while Li Ruiqing, director of the Discipline Inspection Department; Zhang Luanqiao, director of the Department of Student Affairs and Teacher Development; Wang Ying, dean of the Lifelong Education Research Institute; and Li Guangde, deputy director of the Faculty of Agroforestry and Medicine, attended onsite.
Fan Xianrui stated that the competition helps the OUC system implement the proposals of the sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee. It is committed not only to skills training but also to fostering virtue through education, continuously promoting the development of open education, and building teaching teams that will put the Party and the country foremost. She said that OUC teachers should cultivate their moral integrity, devote themselves to research, and work in accordance with General Secretary Xi Jinping's important exposition on the "Nine Principles" of education and the aim of cultivating teachers possessing the "Four Qualities" . They should take a broad view of history and become "masters" of open education, remain committed to the fundamental purpose of education, and contribute to building a system of lifelong education while serving as models for students and helping push the OUC toward becoming a world-class open university.
The competition, after one year of preparation and with the support of all OUC branches, took place in four stages: 12 training sessions, reflection and feedback, preliminary competitions at OUC branches, and the semi-finals at the OUC headquarters. 61`teachers and teaching teams from 37 OUC branches and schools were shortlisted for the semi-finals, and 20 were selected by English-teaching experts for the finals. These consisted of teaching demonstrations and question-and-answer sessions, with judges evaluating performances in terms of teaching objectives, content, process and methods, characteristics and originality, as well as answers to the questions. In the end, Xu Wei along with two other teachers and their teaching team from the Zhejiang Branch won the competition, while Liu Xi along with four other teachers and their teaching team, including teachers from the Qingdao Branch, came 2nd. Chen Yuanyuan along with 11 other teachers and their teaching team from the Anhui Branch came 3rd, and 16 branches, including Tianjin, were given Awards of Excellence.
The participants integrated current affairs, including the Belt and Road initiative, the construction of ecological civilisation, the struggle against Covid-19, the Olympic games, and manned space flight into their instructional designs, bringing political identity, love of family and country, cultural literacy, and consciousness of the rule of law and moral integrity into their teaching. They also explored ways of combining skills training with ideological and political education, and modeled ways English teachers can bring the latter into their instructional design.
In recent years, the Faculty of Foreign Languages has undertaken reforms of English teaching, promoting learning by holding large-scale English-speaking, writing and vocabulary competitions, and research by holding paper-writing contests, on top of the instructional-design competition. A foreign-language competition website has also been built to enable OUC English teachers and students to exchange ideas, and these initiatives together have promoted interactions among teachers and students, and enhanced the cohesion of members of the OUC.
By Liu Ning, OUC