On 28 May 2024, delegations from the Higher Education Press (HEP) and the Central Academy of Drama (CAD) visited the School of Foreign Languages at the Open University of China (OUC).
The visit aimed to conduct special research on the OUC's project titled "Innovative Practice of Large-Scale Personalised English Teaching Based on AI Technology," which is one of the exemplary cases of "Artificial Intelligence + Higher Education" application scenarios sponsored by the Ministry of Education.
Zheng Jipeng, dean of the School of Foreign Languages, warmly welcomed the delegations from HEP and CAD. He highlighted HEP's extensive experience in digital textbook development and CAD's remarkable achievements in arts curriculum development. Dean Zheng expressed his hope that the exploration of digital foreign language teaching could serve as a bridge for comprehensive and multi-disciplinary business exchanges, fostering new advancements in related fields.
Vice Dean Xiong Ying provided a systematic overview of the OUC's AI-empowered smart English teaching reform project, detailing the background, concepts, features, and highlights of the digital teaching reform. She also explained the practical applications of the smart teaching system in areas such as oral drills, essay grading, AI virtual teacher-led automatic Q&A, and self-adaptive learning. Instructor Li Sihan demonstrated the application of the self-adaptive learning system in teaching.
Li Jie, director of the Contents Operation and Integration Centre at HEP, and Li Jin, director of the Department of General Education at CAD, both praised the OUC's smart teaching initiatives. They discussed the new changes, opportunities, and challenges brought by digital empowerment to their respective roles and shared their ongoing explorations and future directions. They expressed their desire to enhance cooperation with the OUC through this exchange of smart teaching experiences.
Following the symposium, the three parties engaged in in-depth discussions on the application of AI in teaching and resource development. They agreed on cooperation intentions in areas such as textbook application, English question bank construction, joint upgrading of the self-adaptive system, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Written by Zhao Yanjiao, photo by Miao Miao, OUC