On May 16, 2013, The Open University of China (OUC) successfully convened a video conference on teaching inspection for open education in 2012. The OUC’s schools and teaching management departments submitted comments on, and solutions for, the problems existing within the inspection process, and gave feedback to the regional RTVUs.
The conference was led by OUC Vice President Li Linshu and was attended by distinguished leaders from provincial RTVUs and open universities, as well as the OUC’s Bayi School, Zongcan School, Air Force School, Tibetan School and School for the Disabled.
Fu Shixian, vice director of the OUC Teaching Evaluation Office, spoke about the state of the inspection system from the perspectives of organization and implementation, analysis of on-site teaching inspection and self-inspection, and the feedback and application of inspection results. In his view, the current system of open education is well-organized and well-implemented, with strong management of teaching processes and improvement of teaching quality.
Feng Liguo, deputy director of the OUC Learner Support Centre, introduced the online teaching inspection system. He said that the online teaching system is constantly being improved and standardized, and that they are exploring ways to reinforce the teaching process and reform teaching models. He hopes that the conference attendees will increase their focus on online teaching, improve the online tutoring capabilities of their staff, and contribute to the research and development of online teaching.
Li Linshu concluded the conference. He pointed out that teaching inspection is an important task during this critical transitional period from RTVUs to open universities. He urged the conference attendees to carefully review the design, implementation and feedback procedure of the inspections, and try to explore the relationship between the inspection process and better open education and open universities. In his view, the inspections reveal a stable teaching process and show that progress has been made in areas such as teaching models, personnel training, management innovation, and systems and policies protection. All of this comes against the background of expanding enrollment and increasing social scrutiny, which have laid a solid foundation for the development of the open universities. Inspections should focus on long-term problems and strive to resolve them.
Li Linshu stressed that teaching inspection is an effective way to guarantee teaching quality and thus an integral part of the teaching quality monitoring system. Based on the future development of the OUC, and combined with the OUC’s missions and tasks, teaching quality inspection should focus on the formulation of assessment criteria and a teaching quality assurance system; the organization of teaching supervision, inspection and evaluation; and the production of an effective mechanism to use inspection feedback. With the help of advanced information technology, inspection methods and measures, a credible teaching quality assurance system that will promote the development of the OUC can be achieved.
By Teaching Evaluation Office, the OUC