The Open University of China (OUC) held a meeting to promote its key work for 2022 on 30 August 2022.
The meeting underlined that at this historic turning point after a decade of development, the university should comprehensively review its major achievements during the past ten years and summarise the experience accumulated during its transformation and development so as to further judge the status quo, analyse problems, clarify the tasks ahead, and ensure that those tasks are fulfilled to a high quality across the whole year. On the eve of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, we should infuse the spirit of the National Congress into the university’s specific work. We must steadfastly follow the “three-step” strategy, remain true to our original aspirations and keep our mission firmly in mind to overcome any difficulties and break new ground. Only by doing this can we make further contributions to facilitating the construction of world-class open universities with Chinese characteristics to ensure that excellent results are achieved by the time the 20th National Congress is convened.
Jing Degang, secretary of the OUC Party Committee and president of the OUC, presided over the meeting and delivered a speech. Thirty-two OUC departments and six enterprises directly under the university gave reports on their key work and how the work is implemented. Responsible university leaders made comments on these reports and deployed work for the autumn semester.
Jing Degang pointed out that over the past decade, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core, by following the deployment and requirement of the Party Group of the Ministry of Education, the OUC has strengthened the Party’s leadership in an all-round way. It has rallied its strength, built solidarity, and led reform, achieving new breakthroughs in many regards, making great leaps in development, and bringing excellence into existing work in many aspects.
The OUC has made 10 major breakthroughs. The first is a breakthrough in digital transformation, with the OUC having been awarded the UNESCO Prize for the Use of ICT in Education, the highest award for information technology in education within the UN system. The second is a breakthrough in the construction of the system, seeing all the provincial radio and TV universities renamed. The third is an increasingly clear development pattern, reaching a consensus on the positioning of goals An initial pattern characterised by “one body with two wings,” “two-wheel drive,” “troika,” and “four platforms” has taken shape. The fourth is empowering education and teaching with technology. The fifth is improving the educational level of the OUC, which is now entitled to confer bachelor’s degrees. The sixth is working hard by anchoring the “Internet + education” concept, successfully launching a lifelong education platform. The seventh is the construction of an educational “bridge,” with credit bank construction awarded first prize for national teaching achievements. The eighth is the intensification of the research and development of learning resources with several awards honoured in teaching material development. The ninth is rising to prominence in innovation and entrepreneurship competitions. The tenth is putting students first and being approved to establish the Council of OUC Education Foundation.
The OUC has achieved leapfrog developments in eight areas. The first is completing the “One Road, One Network and One Platform” with initial results made in the digitalisation of education and teaching. Second is putting in place the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education and achieve positive results in talent formation. The OUC’s fame has been further recognised. The third is attaching equal emphasis to both “quantity” and “quality”, and further expanding the scale of its school-running. The fourth is making great efforts to crack down on all kinds of illegal school-running behaviours, which has further purified the school-running environment. The fifth is building learning resources with a focus on “usefulness and easy learning” to serve lifelong learning for all more effectively. The sixth is serving society’s economic development by giving play to the OUC’s own strengths. The seventh is striving to build a culture of encouraging making contributions and working hard. The eighth is continuously strengthening the Party’s overall leadership over the university and improving the modern university governance system.
Jing Degang stressed that we should spare no efforts to complete our work for the second half of the year while upholding the underlying principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability. At the same time, we should set out to write a new chapter for the high-quality development of open universities for promoting the OUC’s development for the future and pursing the goal of building a world-class open university. To this end, the first task is making great efforts in the implementation of Party building to put into place of the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the CPC in the second half of the year. The second task is highlighting students’ all-round development based on fostering virtue through education with an emphasis on ideological and political education, innovation and entrepreneurship education, and aesthetic education. The third task is strengthening teaching and learning with a student-centred approach, in which students acquire the knowledge useful to them and teachers are truly performing their roles. The fourth task is implementing education for older adults based on the construction of National University for Older Adults. The fifth task is promoting digitalisation with priority placed on applications and a focus on safety, pilot use, and quality. The sixth task is building learning resources with a focus on “usefulness and easy learning.” Further efforts should be made to intensify censorship of the content of teaching materials and digital resources. Curriculum resources development should be scientifically planned to vigorously advance the development of quality learning resources. The seventh task is highlighting safety based on bottom-line thinking. We should solidify the ideological foundation to guarantee the stable implementation of work in all respects, ensure the prevention and control of Covid-19, and improve financial and investment management.
All middle-level cadres and heads of university-owned enterprises, along with other key personnel, attended the meeting on site, with heads of industry colleges and faculty members attending online.
By He Man, OUC