The Global High Level Policy Forum: Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education for the Future We Want organized by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in partnership with ICDE (International Council for Open and Distance Education) was held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris from 9-11 June 2015. Over 200 participants from 57 countries around the world participated in the forum. Mr. Yang Zhijian, President of the Open University of China (OUC) shared the university’s practice in promoting education equity based on information technology in the forum.
The aim of the forum was to provide a better practice framework for higher education institutions based on the principles “opportunity, flexibility, access, promises, quality and success”. The forum held closely to the theme of “equity, opportunity and quality learning outcomes” and provided participants with background papers and attendee surveys on how to embrace the challenges of online, open and flexible higher education. In view of forum discussions and survey results, declarations and action initiatives were released and a report on the policy direction of future higher education will also be published.
During the forum's opening ceremony, Qian Tang, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO, and Gard Titlestad, Secretary General of ICDE, opened the Forum and welcomed the participants. Mandla, President of University of South Africa delivered the key-note speech. Representatives from BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) delivered key-note presentations in the plenary discussions.
Mr. Yang Zhijian said in his key-note presentation that to better promote educational digitization and to improve educational equity and quality, the Chinese government founded the OUC in the year 2012. The OUC has not only undertaken the mission of providing educational opportunities for citizens through open, flexible, and web-based means, but also the mission of realizing quality learning on the condition of equal opportunities. Over several years of practice, the OUC has already achieved some phased outcomes and obtained experience.
First, the digital learning environment: The OUC has cooperated with both domestic and international ICT companies to apply cloud technology to the construction of an open and distance education cloud platform to support massive online learning for 4 million students through multiple terminals so as to realize the one-stop and all-in-one model including teaching, learning, managing, service, and research, all within the OUC’s overall educational system. The interconnected cloud classrooms that integrate the functions of ordinary multi-media classrooms, recording & broadcasting classrooms, and distance video interaction classrooms are to be constructed relying on the cloud platform. Over 300 cloud classrooms have already been constructed or are being constructed, for which the deployments will be focused on remote minority areas such as Xinjiang, Tibet, etc. Currently, the OUC has been working on the research and development of mobile learning terminals for the purpose of ubiquitous learning.
Second, digital learning resources: The OUC has always highlighted the construction, accumulation, and popularization of quality learning resources. In the aspect of resource construction, core courses for every major have been developed into online courses. At the current stage, more than 300 online courses are being developed. In addition, the OUC has developed a large number of micro-lectures with concise content, great practicability, and accumulable credits, which meets the fragmented leaning needs of different learners. To date, the OUC has already launched over 15,000 micro-lectures for the public. The OUC has also shouldered the task of constructing the National E-learning Resource Centre to explore the mechanism of jointly developing and sharing resources. So far, 221 sub-centres have been set up nationwide, assembling nearly 60TB of both domestic and international quality course resources in the form of more than 30,000 courses in different categories. The OUC’s practice of resource construction is guided by the concept of “one resource house with multiple websites”, having established several websites such as “Micro-Lecture”, “Online Study for College Students as Village Officials”, etc., to make available free-of-charge to all citizens various learning courses and resources, an effort which has been widely recognized by the public.
Third, the exploration of the cultivation model of “Integration of Six Networks”: At present, the OUC has been exploring the cultivation model of “Integration of Six Networks” dominated by online learning space, online learning course, online teaching team, online learning service, online learning test and evaluation, and online teaching management. The “Six Networks” are interlinked and integrated, which promotes productive learning behavior, ensures support for the learning process, and ultimately realizes the goals of scientific, efficient, and specific teaching management as well as continuously improving the quality of learner development.
During the group sessions, the sub-themes of “equity and quality, learning outcomes and mobility, lifelong learning and graduates in the 21st century, growth of online education and the future of universities” etc. were discussed by the group members and the following policy suggestions were given: positively develop the governments’ financial support model to open education, define the quality standard for OER (open educational resources), open universities should transform from academic education to specialized skills training, from content quality to tutorial quality, open universities or institutions should develop courses with multilingual teaching content to serve society, open universities should provide international degrees and encourage student exchanges, open universities should promote the students’ ability to use ICT, teachers should become learning and technical experts, the professionalization of teachers’ online tutoring should be improved by exchanging the roles between teachers and students, the government should strengthen financial support for teacher training, case study on how different learners carry out online study should be implemented, etc.
In the closing ceremony, the participants discussed the main development direction of higher education and what measures are to be offered for the global realization of “equity, opportunity, quality learning” in the digital era, the advocacy for relevant policies agenda was also proposed. Tian Belawati, President of ICDE and Rector of Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia and David Atchoarena, Director of the Division for Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems at UNESCO delivered the closing remarks.
By Zhang Xia, OUC