On 10 June 2020, Cheng Jiacai, secretary of the Party Committee of the Chinese Service Centre for Scholarly Exchange (CSCSE), and six other group members paid a visit to the Open University of China (OUC), where they held a discussion with Jing Degang, secretary of the Party Committee and president of the OUC, Yang Xiaotang, OUC vice president, and the heads of relevant departments of the university.

The two sides gave reports and exchanged views on quality assurance in global distance open education and early research on quality assurance in overseas distance education and online education. They agreed to establish an effective, long-term cooperation mechanism and set up special research topics with the help of experts, so that clear research results can be obtained to guide future work practices.

More and more overseas universities have launched distance degree courses or courses with blended learning models. Recently, due to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, the number of students adopting distance learning methods is rising. Since the terms under which China accessed the WTO did not include commitments of any kind in terms of distance cross-border education, courses related to this area are not currently within the scope of certification by CSCSE. In view of the rich research experience accumulated by the OUC in the field of distance and open education, CSCSE hopes to use the OUC’s early research results to fully understand issues relating to quality assurance, social certification, and policy practice, among others, so as to provide basis for policy-making for cross-border distance education.

At the symposium, researchers from the OUC gave a special report on the recognition of the diplomas and academic degrees of the OUC at home and abroad, general information about open universities in foreign countries, distance online education in the United States, and dual-model distance higher education in Australia, which will lay a foundation for future research.

By Hou Yansong,OUC