Beijing, 25 July 2025 - The 2025 Belt and Road Forum for Language and Culture Collaboration and the Global English Education China Assembly was staged in Beijing. FAN Xianrui, Vice President of the Open University of China (OUC) attended the forum and delivered a speech titled "AI Empowering Educational Innovation and Building a Digital Education Community of Shared Future." In her speech, she shared the university's practical achievements in the field of digital intelligence-empowered lifelong education and offered suggestions for the construction of the Belt and Road digital education community with a shared future.
The Forum, hosted Belt and Road Languages and Cultures Network, themed "Promoting the Silk Road Spirit and Deepening Civilisational Exchange and Mutual Learning", brought together representatives from language education and cultural institutions of over 50 countries worldwide to explore innovative pathways for language education in the age of artificial intelligence. As the Secretariat of the ASEAN-China Digital Education Alliance, OUC has long been committed to international digital education cooperation. Its participation in this forum further promoted in-depth connection and pragmatic cooperation between the university and the Belt and Road partner countries in terms of educational resource sharing and technological collaboration.
FAN systematically introduced OUC's digital intelligence-empowered practices in four aspects: firstly, actively serving the national strategy by using digital intelligence to construct a lifelong education system; secondly, advancing educational technology innovation empowered by digital intelligence to strengthen the digital foundation; thirdly, serving China’s strategy of educational opening-up by forging new pathways for international cooperation; and fourthly, exploring a large-scale personalised English learning model guided by the principles of "target-oriented learning content, intelligent learning systems, personalised learning processes, humanised support services, and visualised learning outcomes".
Looking ahead, FAN put forward three proposals: firstly, to explore the new forms of "artificial intelligence + education" and cultivate composite talents with both language ability and cultural tolerance; secondly, to promote the co-development of technical standards and resources, and build a cross-platform digital education community with a shared future; and thirdly, to deepen cooperation with Belt and Road Languages and Cultures Network and share the experience of digital education development.
The OUC’s practical achievements and distinctive features in operating the school attracted widespread attention from the representatives attending the forum. In the election of Executive Unit members during the forum, OUC won the votes from 70 domestic and international universities and international language education organisations, elected as a member of the Executive Unit. During the forum, the Professional Development Framework for English Educators in BRI Nations was officially released. In the future, the university will actively participate in the implementation of the framework and contribute Chinese solutions to promoting the high-quality development of global language education.
Source: OUC WeChat Official Account