A five-member delegation from the Open University of China (OUC) visited the headquarters of Universidad a Distancia de Madrid (UDIMA) and its Barcelona campus from 10-11 December 2019, to discuss cooperation on the construction of football education courses and preliminary preparations for the joint construction of an online Confucius Institute on the Internet, and to learn about the experiences of UDIMA’s regional teaching centre in teaching management and curriculum resource construction.

At the headquarters of UDIMA, the delegation held talks with Arturo de las Heras, president of the university, Ana Landeta, director of its institutional relations and head of international projects, Li Lu, head of Asian market development, and Santiago Hernández, head of marketing and business management. Arturo de las Heras and Li Song, head of the delegation and director of the OUC Faculty of Education, both expressed their willingness to strengthen cooperation and achieve more cooperation results on behalf of the two universities.

Focusing on cooperation on football courses, Spanish football culture and teaching methods will be introduced into the football courses offered as part of the social sports guidance and management major of the OUC Faculty of Education. The two sides discussed the duration, production standards, and costs of video content for football courses and reached a basic consensus. The UDIMA agreed with the construction plan for the cooperative courses proposed by the OUC and will prepare and submit sample courses as soon as possible for the determination of the final cooperation plan.

The UDIMA also hopes to build an online Confucius institute with the OUC to promote Chinese teaching in Spain and spread it to the Spanish speaking regions in South America by combining online and offline teaching methods. The two sides discussed the progress of application for the construction of the online Confucius institute and said that they will work together to make full preparations for the development of teaching Chinese in Spain. The delegation provided UDIMA with a list of OUC Chinese courses and offered two high-quality Chinese teaching resource products as gifts to the university. The UDIMA will provide the OUC with teaching resources for the primary Spanish course. The two sides also discussed cooperation in Chinese teaching and research, as well as MBA courses.

At the Barcelona campus, the delegation held an exchange meeting with the person in charge of the campus, Enrique Cañizares, in order to understand the situation of the teaching centre in the region in terms of teaching management, curriculum resources, learner support services, and information technology application. The delegates said that they appreciated the practical experience of the centre’s teaching services.

The OUC signed a memorandum of cooperation with UDIMA in 2016. The two sides are committed to exploring football course projects, Chinese promotion projects, and Spanish training projects under the framework of the memorandum of cooperation.

By Chen Na, OUC