Editor’s notes: Recently, the Open University of China (OUC) held a meeting to demonstrate the practical achievements of education and teaching reform.
Teaching representatives exchanged and presented the practical achievements of teaching reform from the perspectives of reform of the talent formation model, major development, course resource development, curriculum system reform, teaching model exploration, teacher training, and practical teaching reform. These experiences serve as a reference for teachers to drive the in-depth development of educational reform and promote the high-quality development of open education.
Based on the objective of “focusing on innovation and strengthening practice” for the development of majors, the project team has integrated the educational concept of innovation and entrepreneurship into the specialised construction of the Computer Science course. In cooperation with software enterprises, the team has developed an innovation and entrepreneurship-oriented teaching system that helps students become practical skilled professionals with an innovative spirit and practical abilities, improves the quality of course teaching, and meets the need of the society for IT professionals.
In light of the Craftsman’s Spirit in the new era and guided by the objective of “focusing on innovation and strengthening practice” for the development of majors, the project team has started with an innovating teaching concept, developing innovative thinking, optimising teaching contents, and reforming practical teaching activities to formulate a scientific practical teaching system, focus on cultivating university students’ innovation and entrepreneurship abilities, and to improve their overall quality by building on basic skills training and aiming to cultivate innovative abilities. Under the guidance of this objective, the construction of the “Android Smart Phone Programming” online course aims to cultivate practical and skilled talents with an innovative spirit and practical abilities for mobile application development.
I. Teaching achievements and solutions
Problem 1 in teaching: Optimising and integrating various practical teaching stages, such as experiments, practical training, and internships, and building a practical teaching system oriented towards training innovative and entrepreneurship abilities with systematic thinking and comprehensive design ideas to solve problems like the relatively simple practical teaching models and the disconnection between theory and practice.
Solutions: Although the OUC offers various practical teaching stages, such as experiments, practical training, and internships, and each stage is guaranteed to be a certain duration, there is a lack of effective internal connection and natural combination. In response to the requirements for training innovation and entrepreneurship-oriented abilities, this teaching achievement has come to divide teaching activities into the three stages of course practice, major practice, and comprehensive practice in light of the teaching objectives of different course modules by following the principle of advancements in the progress of practical teaching content, practical skill level, and comprehensive application level. These three stages arrange the practical teaching activities step by step and lay out the implementation of the training objectives and practical teaching contents for innovation and entrepreneurship at each stage so as to meet the training requirements for students’ practical and innovative abilities.
Problem 2 in teaching: How to apply the “engineering project system” teaching strategy to solve problems such as insufficient existing course forms, simple teaching methods, and insufficient cultivation of students’ innovative abilities, as well as the poor connection between practical teaching stages inside and outside the university by using the cultivation of the students’ innovation and entrepreneurship abilities as the orientation and real software projects as the carrier.
Solutions: The OUC has analysed the technical needs of trade and industry for mobile development application professionals by closely following the development trends of the software industry. The integration of various disciplines is enhanced in line with the needs of software enterprises for professionals based on enterprise projects, teaching competitions, and entrepreneurship incubation projects on campus with real software projects as the carrier. Learning tasks are used to customise the design of “the foundation of basic skills training and the objective of innovation ability training” and to build units of knowledge. The students complete the project in stages under the guidance of the teaching team (including teachers from the programme and supervisors from enterprises). The passive situation of “teachers preaching and students listening” that existed in the past has been changed. Attention has been paid to the active participation of students and training their innovative thinking ability. When they are guided in solving practical engineering problems, students can really feel the sense of achievement in applying what they have learned.
Problem 3 in teaching: Reconstructing the online course by applying an adaptive hybrid gamified teaching method, which applies game elements and design concepts to the teaching of the online course. This method has solved a number of problems, including insufficient teaching situations, lack of relevance, and difficulty in stimulating the students’ initiative.
Solutions: A gamified mechanism is applied to online teaching, and online learning is put in a carefully designed game scenario to provide students with a favourable interactive learning environment and a complete problem description scenario. At the same time, holistic consideration is given to the students’ scenario-based cognitive experience, collaboration-based social experience, and motivation-based proactive experience to propose adaptive game teaching strategies, set hybrid game rules, and record and evaluate the learning process to give the students real challenges and immediate feedback. This not only enhances the students’ sense of substitution and immersion, it also stimulates their awareness of independent learning. In addition, this method can adjust the difficulty of the games according to the students’ learning foundation, reduce their cognitive load, and give them better learning experiences.
II. Measures of the teaching reform
(I) Build a practical teaching system oriented towards the cultivation of innovation and entrepreneurship abilities guided by the objective of cultivating the students’ innovation ability and stimulating their entrepreneurship potential using hierarchical practical teaching activities. The specialised training scheme requires the students “to have an innovative spirit and outstanding information literacy,” so the course team has gradually set up practical teaching activities from the three stages of course practice, specialty practice, and comprehensive practice to optimise and integrate the various stages of experiments, practical training, and internships, and to ensure the practical teaching system is oriented towards training innovation and entrepreneurship abilities with systematic thinking and overall optimisation.
(II) Design the online course and integrate knowledge of innovation and entrepreneurship into teaching practice by applying the “engineering project system” teaching strategy. With mobile Internet trade and entrepreneurship in mind, a project team is made up of trade experts, enterprise supervisors, and teachers and students from the major. Teaching and practice are advanced simultaneously during the project, and the students are guided to solve practical problems and to accept assessments and examinations from multiple parties with real software projects that meet social needs as the carrier.
(III) Innovate the online course teaching model by building on the concept of outcomes-based education (OBE). The online curriculum structure is designed for learners, including five steps: theme architecture, module design, task layout, silent guidance, and summary and transfer. Two centres (teaching objective and key and difficult points) are prioritised to construct themed situations, design teaching activities from “the floor” to “the ceiling,” and to cultivate the students so as to achieve the transfer and integration of the course knowledge with innovative thinking.
(IV) Attract, support, and motivate students to learn with online courses by applying a gamified teaching strategy. The game design concept is applied to online course teaching, and a game thinking model is applied to redesign online course teaching activities and practical training tasks so as to make boring tasks more fun.
(V) Build an open, diversified, hierarchical, and cooperative online teaching team based on the online course. The course teaching is completed in cooperation with teachers from the major inside the open-university system, enterprise experts, and teachers from regular institutions of higher education. The need for talents in enterprises is fulfilled through in the process of talent training to maintain the freshness of the course contents and the advanced nature of the teaching team.
III. Teaching reform achievements
(I) Continuous improvement and enhancement of the students’ innovation and entrepreneurship abilities.
After nearly six years of teaching and practical exploration, the OUC has improved and optimised the practical teaching system by strengthening the cultivation of students’ learning, practical, innovation, and social adaptation abilities. The effectiveness of the practical teaching system model oriented towards training innovation and entrepreneurship abilities has been verified by real teaching effects. A number of successful experiences in practical teaching reform have been summarised for reference to regular institutions of higher education and higher vocational universities in their practical teaching reform and practical teaching system construction.
(II) Construction of specialised teaching resources
The design and construction of units of knowledge have been customised and around 1,500 minutes of high-definition video have been recorded in line with the specific needs of software enterprises for software talents. In 2014, game resources such as the design of a medal system, title system, and digital certificate system for the gamified mechanism were introduced. In 2017, 400-minute sign language videos were developed for deaf students.
(III) Recognition and wide application of the course teaching contents
Since 2013, the online course has been deployed to the OUC online course learning platform with more than 3,000 students choosing it per semester. Since its deployment to the Chinese university MOOC platform (www.icourse163.org, a Chinese MOOC platform) in 2017, it has been in operation for seven terms, with more than 9,000 students choosing the course each term. At the same time, due to the course’s rich resources and appropriate contents, which can be closely combined with the needs of the industry and enterprises for software professionals, some IT companies have chosen the course as their top free training course for primary and intermediate Android programmers.
(IV) Students’ learning enthusiasm and activity improved by the application of an adaptive hybrid gamified teaching model and strategies, with the model showing universality and demonstration potential
The adaptive hybrid gamified teaching strategy is applied to the teaching process to explore the modular reform of course contents and the innovation of course teaching methods, to establish a teaching process with integrated game elements, and to stimulate the students’ learning enthusiasm. As such, the teaching quality is improved. In 2018, a survey of more than 400 students was conducted, and over 80% of adult learners recognised the gamified teaching mechanism, saying that games could improve learning interest and learning effectiveness. At the same time, the model has some universality and demonstration potential and has been used to transform the teaching of several courses from the same major, including Computer Networks and Dreamweaver Web Design, and initial results have been achieved in the teaching of the online courses.
(V) Improved the teaching effect and scientific research level of the teacher team with initial results made in the construction of an online team
A number of achievements have been made since the establishment of the “Android Smart Phone” course team in 2013. The “Android Smart Phone Programming” teaching team was selected as a high-level university continuing education teaching team in Beijing in 2019. Members of the team have won prizes in teaching competitions; been honoured with the titles "National Excellent Teacher" and "Excellent Teacher in Beijing"; and won first prize in the "Wonderful Teaching Segments from the Computer Education Research Association” competition from the Beijing Association of Higher Education. The team members have actively carried out research on course development, reformed the practical teaching model, and developed OUC exquisite courses and the national exquisite online open courses.
By Wang Li, OUC Faculty of Science and Engineering