On October 11, 2012, the China Distance Education Academic Forum themed “Distance Lab: Supporting Environment and Impetus for Innovation” was held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. This forum was jointly hosted by Distance Education in China and Zhejiang RTVU. It focused on practical issues in distance labs and distance teaching from
the perspective of integrating information technology and education, and combined case study analysis of the Zhejiang RTVU Open and Distance Lab with insights and lessons learned during its construction. Experts discussed how to build a supporting environment for distance education and provide impetus for innovation in distance professional development models and open university construction.
The mission of the Zhejiang RTVU Open and Distance Lab is to integrate information technology and distance education to resolve the conflict between scale and quality, overcome difficulties including imbalanced lab resources and lack of innovation, and provide an effective, practical environment and teaching methods for cultivating innovative professionals. The three major components of the lab are the local open lab, the lab resource database and the distance lab platform. The distance lab platform is the core component, and comprises more than 200 experimental projects in engineering, economics, management and law. It provides practical teaching services for more than 80 courses, including demonstration experiments, interactive virtual experiments and remotely controlled experiments.
At the forum, experts shared their academic opinions on how to integrate education and information technology in distance lab construction. Detailed topics included the function of the distance teaching supporting environment in providing impetus for innovation in professional development models, experiences and insights gained from the construction of domestic and overseas distance labs, how distance labs can satisfy and adapt to the needs of distance learners, the role of distance labs in teaching reform, and the position and future development of distance labs in a practical distance teaching system.
By Jin Hongyu