Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, announced the list of national exemplary projects and approved projects for the "5G+ Smart Education" pilot application programme.
The project "Construction of a 5G-Empowered Large-Scale Online Smart Examination System," led by the Open University of China (OUC), successfully passed the evaluation and was included in the programme list. It is reported that a total of 93 projects nationwide passed the evaluation, with 44 of them being selected as national exemplary projects. The leading institutions for these selected projects include prestigious universities such as Peking University, Zhejiang University, Beijing Normal University, and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
Since the project's approval in 2022, Fan Xianrui, a member of the Party Committee and vice president of the OUC, has served as the project leader. Multiple departments, including the Department of Digitalisation, Academic Affairs Department, OUC Online, Engineering Centre, and Experimental College, have worked collaboratively on the project. After more than two years of continuous efforts, the project has developed an integrated smart examination management system characterised by the "network + cloud + edge + intelligence + terminal" model. It has established a large-scale smart examination scenario based on 5G, covering applications such as intelligent question generation, large-scale online examinations, intelligent candidate identification, cheating behaviour analysis, remote proctoring, intelligent grading, and digitised examination evaluation. By leveraging advanced digital technologies, the project has empowered the digital transformation of the entire examination process, enabling the OUC to achieve "authentic exams," "on-demand exams," and "ubiquitous exams." The project has essentially built a new-era smart examination governance system that aligns with the high-quality development of education. Since its inception, the project has served over 4.6 million candidates across more than 4,600 test centres in 31 regions nationwide.
Looking ahead, the OUC will continue to explore the deep integration of digital and intelligent technologies with education and teaching. The OUC aims to develop and promote a series of innovative demonstration outcomes empowered by digital and intelligent technologies, thereby shaping new advantages for its development. This endeavour will contribute to the development of an educational system that serves lifelong learning for all.
By He Yuanjing, OUC