On 11 October 2022, the Open University of China (OUC) held a seminar on learning support for the degree-conferral English programme, part of professional development in the OUC system. The event aimed to upgrade the teaching abilities of its teachers and to provide all-round learning-support services, supporting the development of the English programme. Fan Xianrui, OUC vice president, and Zhao Liling, president of the Xian branch, attended.

Fan Xianrui expressed the hope that this service would enhance the capabilities, digital literacy, and innovation of teachers in the English programme, and suggested three ways of reaching this goal: to acknowledge the importance of teaching abilities, to remain open to new learning, and to think deeply and insist on teaching reforms.

Zhao Liling said that the Xian branch has constantly upgraded its learning-support services, teacher abilities, instructional design, and moral education through initiatives such as a multi-modal teaching-reform pilot project for its Public English programme, research and investigation within the OUC system, an English instructional-design competition for curriculum-based ideological and political education, smart-teaching reform, and so on. These initiatives have helped strengthen teaching quality and provided models of teaching reform for other disciplines.

Teacher representatives from seven branches, including Gansu and Fujian, introduced the implementation of degree-conferral English teaching there, and shared experiences related to teaching-team work, curriculum-based ideological and political education, resource construction, use of teaching software, learning-data analysis, research, and so on. They also suggested how to encourage collaboration among the teaching teams for their mutual benefit and that of the overall programme.

The seminar also covered topics such as a web-based question bank for degree-conferral English examinations for both English and non-English majors, online core courses and teaching teams, development of teaching resources, and smart-teaching reform, with new changes analysed to help teachers better understand the new status quo and development of the exam. The event clarified the direction of future work and highlighted regional teaching, offering precious learning and exchange opportunities, and strengthening the teaching abilities of OUC teachers.

Zheng Jipeng, vice dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages, and all its faculty attended. The event was delivered both online and offline, with over 500 English teachers participating online.

Written by Wang Minchen; Photos by Zhuge Huangyu, OUC