On 19 April 2022, the Open University of China (OUC) held a meeting to demonstrate the practical achievements of education and teaching reform. The meeting, which aimed to deepen education and teaching reform and promote the high-quality development of open education through exchange, mutual learning, and consensus building, was broadcast live to teachers throughout the OUC system.
All members of the leading group of the OUC attended the meeting on-site, and main principals and teacher representatives from various teaching departments and teaching management departments attended the meeting online.
Jing Degang, secretary of the Party Committee and OUC president, put forward four requirements for education and teaching reform work in his speech:
Firstly, we should focus on fostering virtue through education and intensifying reform.
Students of open universities account for 11.7% of the total number of students in higher education in China. We should adhere to ideological and political education and conduct in-depth explorations in the field of large-scale online ideological and political education, through which we will gradually blaze a trail characterised by the unique characteristics of open universities and educate talents that will be of use to the Party and national development.
Secondly, we must follow the principle of teaching students in a way that is easy to understand so we can improve engagement.
Teaching and learning is essential to improving the quality of education. Teachers in open universities must attach importance to making lectures and courses attractive and influential, and engage in teaching practices via a range of creative forms and methods. A number of outstanding teachers of different types are expected to stand out and rank to excellent teachers at national levels.
Thirdly, we must implement a digital strategy to improve teaching quality.
The construction of a teaching team that thinks in a way that is suited to the Internet age must be integrated with digital strategic actions. Work must be done to effectively enhance teachers’ digital literacy, promote the digitisation of learning resources, teaching processes, examinations and evaluations, and management services, and realise the high-quality development of open universities.
Fourthly, we must improve teaching skills with a focus on the comprehensive quality of teachers.
OUC teachers should work hard and become “good teachers,” implement the standards for “good teachers” put forward by General Secretary Xi Jinping, and learn to educate and teach students. We should improve students’ sense of belonging and achievement by enhancing teachers’ sense of responsibility and mission.
Li Song, OUC vice president, pointed out that as an open university, the key focus for the OUC lies in mapping out ways to meet students’ expectations and implement the “student-centred” concept in all teaching practices. He stressed that teachers should engage in explorations and reform in line with the principles of fostering virtue through education, creating excellence and improving quality, teaching according to the demands of the people, and student–centred approach, and thus forging ahead towards the goal of creating excellence, improving quality, and seeking high-quality development.
The meeting was presided over by Gu Xiaohua, director of the OUC Academic Affairs Department. All branches, schools, and study centres of the OUC system participated in the online meeting, with 7,000 people tuning into the live stream.
By OUC Academic Affairs Department