The Open University of China’s (OUC) “One College Student Per Village” programme was awarded the 2020 UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education (UNESCO Prize for the Use of ICT in Education), as announced by the UNESCO headquarters in Paris on 6 April 2021. This is the second time that a Chinese institution has won the award since 2008.
The UNESCO Prize for the Use of ICT in Education, the highest award for information technology in education within the UN system, rewards individuals, organisations, and non-governmental organisations that use digital technologies to enhance teaching, learning and, overall education performance. The theme of the 2020 edition is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance the continuity and quality of learning. The OUC stood out from among nearly 100 institutional applicants in the world thanks to its “One College Student Per Village” programme.
According to UNESCO, the “One College Student Per Village" programme uses AI to offer quality learning opportunities to learners from rural and remote areas. The programme is based on a smart learning platform that uses voice and semantic analysis, automatic feedback, automated essay scoring, and big data analysis, which allows an increasing number of learners from rural and remote areas to benefit from quality learning experiences.
The OUC's mission is to promote lifelong learning supported by modern information technology. It is a new type of university that delivers open education to students from the whole country. The university has been engaged in providing education in China for the past 41 years, especially in rural and remote areas, and has made full use of modern information technology such as AI to provide quality education services for underdeveloped areas and farmers. In 2004, China's Ministry of Education launched the “One College Student Per Village” programme, which is organised and implemented by the OUC via its nationwide operation system. The “One College Student Per Village” programme is based on the concept of “helping the poor by improving their intelligence and supporting intellect improvement through education.” Through modern distance education and information technology, it aims to bring together high-quality resources, construct a hybrid teaching model based on the combination of online autonomous learning and face-to-face tutoring, and cultivate local talents who are willing to stay in rural areas and do a good job in order to get rid of poverty. Since 2017, the OUC has begun to explore integrating AI technology into teaching, educational administration, and other educational process by making use of AI technology to develop exclusive learning plans for students, accurately pushing high-quality educational resources, strengthening learning support services, and implementing automatic learning evaluation. These efforts have promoted the development of the “One College Student Per Village” programme and provided references and replicable solutions for the development of disadvantaged areas and groups in education around the world.
As of now, there are 1,513 learning centres in the “One College Student Per Village” programme, covering 29 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) in China. The programme has offered a total of 29 junior college and undergraduate majors (orientations) and trained over 530,000 graduates. Having trained a large number of applied practical talents for new rural construction and Rural Revitalisation, the programme has played a positive role in narrowing the regional and urban-rural gap, promoting educational equity, serving the construction of lifelong learning education system for the whole people, and helping to fight a decisive battle against poverty. In the future, the programme will upgrade its information technology, intensify the use of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and other modern information technology means, cultivate more local talents, and continue to aid rural revitalisation.
The UNESCO prize for ICT in education, funded by the government of the Kingdom of Bahrain, was launched in 2006, with two winners (institutions) awarded annually. Previous winners include South Korea and Finland; the United States and Belgium; China and Egypt; Russia and Jordan; the United Kingdom and Venezuela; Germany and South Korea; Costa Rica and Singapore; Germany and Bangladesh; India and Morocco; the Netherlands and Finland; and Spain and Brazil. In 2020, the two winners are the OUC with its“One College Student Per Village” programme and Finland with its collaborative education platform "ViLLE".
By OUC