On 28 September 2021, the Open University of China (OUC) and the University of London (UoL) connected via video transmission for the opening ceremony of a 12-week online tutor-training programme aiming to help OUC teachers with distance teaching, design of online classes, evaluation, and other areas, and provide a platform for their collaboration. Over 250 teachers from the OUC headquarters and more than 40 branches are participating.

Li Song, OUC vice president; Mary Stiasny, Pro Vice-Chancellor (International) of UoL; personnel from the OUC International Department and the Department of Student Affairs and Teacher Development; and all the trainees attended the opening ceremony.

Li Song reviewed the decade-long friendly and cooperative relationship of the OUC and UoL, as well as areas of cooperation, including teacher training and the Sino-British Fellowship Trust Project. He mentioned that, from 2010 to 2019, 10 OUC scholars visited and studied at UoL in exchange programmes, with nearly 30 receiving short-term training in its School of Education. He also noted that this online tutor-training programme will not only help teachers in their work, but also advance the cooperation of the two universities in terms of construction of curriculum resources, scholar exchanges, research in distance education, and so on.

Mary Stiasny stated that, while the OUC is the larger of the two, both it and UoL have rich experience in online open education. She extended her congratulations to the OUC for the awarding of the UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of ICT in Education to its "One College Student Per Village" programme, and praised the cooperation of the two universities, particularly in implementing this programme. She pledged to work to ensure the quality of its design, enabling it to meet the actual needs of the trainees with creative methods of training, and expressed the hope that the programme would contribute to the development of distance teaching in the OUC system.

The UoL Centre for Distance Education, through the efforts of its expert team, has designed special courses, learning resources, and learning activities for the programme. Through the courses, the trainees have gained an in-depth understanding of the theoretical and practical framework of UoL’s curriculum design, making for a very rewarding learning experience.

The programme is the first collaboration of its kind between the OUC and a world-renowned university in relation to training in online education, and an important step toward renewing international ties interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is also of great significance for implementing the requirements of the OUC Comprehensive Reform Plan on the construction of teacher teams and foreign-cooperation platforms, for learning from the education systems of other countries, and for enhancing the online teaching of OUC teachers.

Written by Chen Na; photos by Xie Yun， OUC