With the rapid development of online education, it is an important and urgent task to improve the online education and teaching ability of college teachers. It is of great significance to deepen research in terms of implementing the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, improving college teachers’ professional online teaching ability, establishing high-quality teaching teams in colleges and universities, and promoting the quality improvement of education and teaching in institutions of higher education.
On 8 January 2021, the Institute of Educational Technology of the Open University (OUUK) and the Artificial Intelligence and Human Languages Lab of Beijing Foreign Studies University jointly published the ninth report on innovating pedagogy, namely, Innovating Pedagogy 2021. This year’s report proposes 10 innovations in pedagogy: best learning moments; enriched realities; gratitude as pedagogy; using chatbots in learning; equity-oriented pedagogy; hip-hop based education; student co-created teaching; telecollaboration for language learning; evidence-based teaching; and corpus-based pedagogy.
On 2 March 2020, Educause released the 2020 Educause Horizon Report (Teaching and Learning Edition).
From 18-22 November 2019, a seminar for backbone teachers of the online teaching team undertaken by the Teaching Affairs Department of the Open University of China (OUC) was held at the OUC conference centre. Seventy-seven teachers from the OUC branches and industry and corporate colleges participated in the seminar.
Wu Guorong, deputy secretary of the Party committee and president of the Fujian Branch, attended the meeting and delivered a welcome speech. He summarised and reviewed the significant changes in the orientation, training object and model, and school running strength of the Fujian branch over the past 40 years.
In order to improve the academic and scientific research atmosphere of the Faculty of Political Science and Law, boost teachers' enthusiasm for scientific research, and serve the construction of the open education law major, the Law School of the Open University of China (OUC) Faculty of Political Science and Law held an academic salon on 21 November 2019, with the theme of "Research on the Design and Reform of the Undergraduate Course System of the OUC’s Law Major in the New Era.”
In order to fully implement the basic task of cultivating talented personnel through morality, strengthen the construction of medicine-related disciplines and specialties, and improve the quality of teaching and personnel training, the Faculty of Agroforestry and Medicine of the Open University of China (OUC) held a meeting on the teaching of medicine majors in Kunming, Yunnan Province, from 22-23 November 2019.
An event to select outstanding teaching cases by students of primary education and outstanding cases of collective activities for preschoolers by students of preschool education, the first of the kind at the Open University of China (OUC), concluded successfully in Beijing.
In order to thoroughly implement the spirit of the National Conference on Teaching Work, promote the basic task of cultivating talents with morality, improve the construction quality of politics and law majors, and enhance the quality of training and teaching in these majors, the Faculty of Political Science and Law of the Open University of China (OUC) held a teaching work conference and seminar for politics and law majors in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, from 12-14 November 2019.
From 9-10 July 2019, the Open University of China (OUC) organised for a team of experts to evaluate the bachelor's degree conferral rights for four majors that were opened in the spring semester of 2018: Pharmacy, Rural Regional Development, Mining Engineering, and Engineering Costing. This is the first time that the OUC has launched evaluation work for the right to grant bachelor's degrees to new majors that haven’t yielded any graduate students yet.