From 14 - 16 September 2022, the MOE Research & Training Centre for Community Education held its second Community Education Promotion and Achievement Exhibition online and offline.

The event was titled "Digital Transformation of Community Education to Build a System of Lifelong Learning for All". Ju Chuanjin, vice president of the Open University of China (OUC) and director of the MOE Research & Training Centre for Community Education, and vice president Fan Xianrui attended.

Ju Chuanjin delivered a speech titled "Digital Transformation of Community Education for Joint Construction of a New Lifelong Learning System",  highlighting the need for modernisation in education via information technology, and underscoring the requirements for community education: first, to study and implement General Secretary Xi Jinping's important discourse on education and instructions on the building of a “Digital China”; second, to rethink how community education can better meet personalised, lifelong, and diverse learning needs; third, to participate in the national strategy for use of information technology in education, promote the connection of local community-, lifelong-, and continuing-education platforms with the OUC's lifelong-education platform, and collaborate with local authorities on big-data governance of community education; fourth, to accelerate the construction of a convenient IT-based community-education system integrating offline and online; fifth, to continue to develop “Lectures by Competent People” within community education; and sixth, to accelerate the building of “learning areas” and enhance the construction of “learning cities and provinces” via information technology, expanding their coverage and influence.

In the keynote speeches of experts on “Digital Transformation and Lifelong Learning in Community Education", Fan Xianrui introduced the background, history, and achievements in building the OUC “Lifelong Education Platform”, its uses and prospects, under the title "Building a New Ecology of Lifelong Learning to Serve Lifelong Learning for All". She pointed out that the OUC lifelong education platform aims to build a new system which “provides education for all and enables learning anytime and anywhere” through “diverse resources and methods”. She underscored that linking the OUC lifelong education platform with the provincial lifelong-education and continuing-education platforms will allow greater progress and more sustainable development.

The MOE Research and Training Centre for Community Education reported on the 10-year process of digital transformation in community education, introducing 485 practical and innovative projects launched in two stages in 2022, and including the progress of 118 demonstration projects in particular, acting to promote and share characteristic “Lectures by Competent People” within community education, and submitting data related to it.

Experts in internet and community education were invited to speak.

Leaders of relevant OUC departments, as well as invited experts and staff, attended the meeting at the main venue of the OUC. Community-education personnel from local administrations, guidance centres, and the open-university system attended in more than 80 sub-venues, and community-college personnel in each district or county attended online.

 

Written by Li Huiqin and Du Ruo, and photos by Zhuge Huanyu, OUC