On 10 July 2019, the OUC Teaching Steering Committee meeting was held at the OUC headquarters in Wukesong. The theme of the meeting was "not forgetting the original heart and keeping in mind the mission" in the new era in order to implement the requirements of "fostering virtue through education and honouring the mission to develop fair and quality education.”

Participants in the meeting discussed the follow-up work schedule for the school quality control and supervision, as well as issues such as the functions of the Committee, the scope of its duties, its working mechanism, and relevant content concerning monitoring and evaluation in Quality Standards 2.0. Lin Yu, vice president in charge of school quality work, 14 members of the Teaching Steering Committee within the OUC system, and Han Yi attended the meeting. The meeting was presided over by Hu Bo, deputy director of the Quality Supervision and Evaluation Centre.

Lin Yu pointed out that as an important part of the quality assurance system, teaching steering work should cover at least three aspects: first, the inspection and diagnosis of issues to do with day-to-day schooling; second, the rectification of and implementation of solutions for the problems found in teaching inspections; and third, the supervision of the progress and effect of the implementation of teaching reform measures. He hopes that members of the committee will play the role of a think-tank and discuss the functions of the Teaching Steering Committee, its scope of duties, its operation mechanism, and relevant quality standards combined with the requirements of the Party and our country for the quality of education and teaching in the new era and the actual development of the OUC.

Qi Wenxin, deputy director of the Teaching Steering Committee, introduced the Teaching Steering Committee's basic situation, the background of the monitoring and evaluation content specified within the quality standards, and related issues that need to be resolved at the meeting.

During the deliberation process, the expert committee reviewed and revised the quality control assessments that form part of the quality standards. They had a heated discussion on the content of monitoring and supervision, as well as evaluation. They also shared the successful experiences and practices of teaching supervision of each branch. After discussion, the committee members reached a consensus and agreed that quality is the lifeline of the school and that teaching supervision is an important part of quality assurance. The OUC should establish a dynamic quality monitoring and release mechanism to enable dynamic monitoring of the whole process at any time through big data. The supervision work at the headquarters should focus on degree education, carrying out special supervision based on big data analysis. The main target of supervision should be the branches. The branches should also establish a corresponding supervision system. In terms of evaluation indicators, it is recommended to specifically quantify the descriptions of the observation points while creating a classification of secondary indicators in order to improve feasibility.

With regards to the functions and scope of duties of the Teaching Steering Committee, the committee members believe that the original foundation should be built upon to become more problem-oriented. The problems found in teaching inspections, the feedback from the committee, and the overall prominent issues should be combined and dealt with with the special supervision of academic education. The focus should be on supervising the relationship between the scale of enrolment and the development of connotation, in particular, the implementation of the teaching process around the training of talents and the learning effect of online teaching engagement, as well as special supervision carried out to solve problems such as updating old resources. As for the operation mechanism, they proposed holding regular meetings and establishing a big data monitoring platform on a daily basis. If problems are encountered during the process, they can temporarily convene a meeting.

Han Yi said that after the meeting, the relevant aspects of the quality standards will be modified according to the suggestions of the Committee members. In combination with the current situation, the satisfaction survey will be included in the standards. Additionally, at the suggestion of the Committee members, a quality monitoring big data platform and dynamic quality monitoring report release mechanism will be established as soon as possible in order to play the role of the Committee members in the engagement of quality work. As the secretariat of the OUC Quality Assurance Committee, we will provide more services to committee members.

By Feng Lihong, OUC