To further respond to UNESCO IITE Initiative “Combat COVID-19: Keep learning. Together we are on the move!” , the Open University of China(OUC) has continued to provide UNESCO with learning resources in Chinese and English to help with the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the prevention and control of the COVID-19 outbreak in China has been positively extended as of March 2020, the pandemic has been spreading rapidly overseas.
The Open University of China (OUC) has offered high-quality learning resources to the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (hereinafter referred to as IITE) website in order to help learners around the world with “home-based online learning.”
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the international partners of the Open University of China (OUC) have paid close attention to its development, expressed their condolences and support to the OUC in various ways, strongly praised China's tremendous efforts in fighting the epidemic, and even helped by collecting protective materials to provide practical assistance.
From 24-28 December 2019, at the invitation of Toraighyrov Pavlodar State University (PSU) in Kazakhstan, a delegation of four members from the Open University of China(OUC) visited Almaty and Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, and discussed cooperation with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Almaty) JSC, PSU, and NFC Kazakhstan LTD, a part of China Nonferrous Metal Construction Corporation Ltd. subordinate to China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group(CNMC) based in Kazakhstan.
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.
From 12-13 December 2019, 15 teachers and students from Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU) paid a two-day cultural exchange visit to the OUC. The delegation was led by executive vice president of STOU, associate professor Thapanat Prom-In, along with four teachers and 10 students from the Faculty of Arts, the School of Management, the School of Law, the School of Human Ecology, and the School of Politics.
From 1-8 December 2019, a delegation of five members of the Open University of China (OUC) led by Zhang Luanjiao, head of the Department of Student Affairs and Teacher Development, visited Zambia and Botswana at the invitation of Sino-Zam Vocational College of Science and Technology and Botswana Open University to learn about the operation of the OUC Learning Centre in Zambia and to investigate future cooperation with Botswana Open University.