During the 2013 “Pioneer Party Members”, “Excellent and Innovative Work Case Studies” and “Excellent Investigation Report” selection activities carried out by the Party Committee directly under the Ministry of Education (MOE), Gu Xiaohua, Vice Dean of the School of Arts and Law of the Open University of China (OUC), and Feng Liguo, Deputy Director of the OUC Learner Support Centre, were named “Pioneer Party Members”,

while the MyEChinese Distance Education and Publishing System was named as an “Excellent and Innovative Work Case”.

In order to learn, promote and carefully implement the guidelines of the Eighteenth National Party Congress and the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, carry out the educational practice of the Party’s mass line, comprehensively drive the implementation of the National Outline for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development, and work hard to deepen comprehensive reform in the field of education, the Party Committee directly under the MOE, held a meeting on February 28 to award the advanced models and excellent working achievements emerging from the field of education. This is the third time that the OUC has taken part in this selection, and the second time that the OUC has been awarded this honor after Qi Yanwei, Yang Xiaotang and Kuang Guiqiu, and the “credit bank” case study.

The OUC Party Committee selected individuals and work cases that had made outstanding contributions to the construction of the OUC. All the individuals and work cases adhere to the standard of looking for the truth and being practical, working hard, deepening reform, and having the courage to be innovative.

The Principles of Political Science, completed by Gu Xiaohua as one of the OUC’s first batch of online core courses, provides a model for the construction of courses in this category. The Human Resources Management in Public Sectors online courses, also completed and managed by Gu, was named a high-quality OUC course.

The Construction Plan for the OUC Online Core Courses (2013-2015), template of online core courses, overall evaluation standards for online core courses, technical standards for online core courses and other relevant documents, as well as The Construction Guidelines for the OUC Online Core Courses, all organized, set and completed by Feng, have contributed greatly to the management of online teaching.

The MyEChinese Distance Education and Publishing System is a well-organized distance education system for Chinese language geared to the needs of learners, teachers, managers, publishers, and business operators around the world. It consists of five large online platforms: the “Easy Learning” platform for learning Chinese language and Chinese culture, the “Easy Teaching” platform for training international Chinese language teachers, the “Easy Access” platform for managing and publishing teaching resources, the “Easy Research” platform for international academic seminar and global Chinese language education exchange, and the “Easy Campus” online virtual community. These online platforms bring together the three fields of distance education for Chinese language, education services and education publishing; aim to build an online ecological environment for international Chinese language education of the OUC; drive the development of the OUC’s educational internationalization; and support the international promotion of the Chinese language through digitization, thus contributing to the internationalization of Chinese culture

This activity was recommended by the Party organization of every unit, appraised through discussion between offices, departments and bureaus, and finally selected by the jury. Among the offices of the MOE and the units directly below it, 72 people were named “Pioneer Party Members” and 49 programmes were selected as “Excellent and Innovative Work Case Studies”.

By Wang Shuo, the OUC