On November 1, 2012, a high-level delegation from Canada's Athabasca University visited the OUC. The delegates were Dr. Margaret Haughey (Vice President, Academic), Brian Stewart (Vice President Information Technology), Dr. Cindy Ives (Associate Vice President, Learning Resources) and Dr. Iain Grant (Manager, Special Projects).
On June 25, 2012, a 13-member delegation headed by Nils Usakovs, mayor of Riga, visited the Open University of China (OUC). Vice President Zhang Shaogang met with the delegation along with Director Yang Yongbo of the Department of International Cooperation and Exchange, Vice Director Li Fujia of the ChineseLanguageCenter, Vice Director Wang Ying of the Research Institute of Open and Distance Education and other OUC colleagues.
The 7th International Conference and Workshops on Technology and Chinese Language Teaching in the 21st Century (TCLT7) was held May 25-27, 2012, at theHawaii Imin International Conference Center at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in Honolulu, Hawaii. The OUC Chinese Language Center attended the conference and presented a paper entitled "A Framework for Distance Chinese Education in the Cloud and Mobile Era", introducing the development philosophy and research achievements of the "MyEChinese Distance Chinese
From May 13 to May 16, a delegation led by OUC Vice President Zhang Shaogang visited Ecuador at the invitation of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Ecuador. The delegation held talks with representatives from the Ecuador government and was briefed on the status of open and distance education in Ecuador.
The 5th National Chinese Language Conference, sponsored by China's Hanban (Confucius Institute Headquarters), The US College Board, and The Asia Society, was held from April 12th to the 14th, 2012, in Washington, DC. More than 1300 Educational administrators, presidents and teachers from secondary and primary schools, as well the presidents of various Confucius institutes, attended the conference. The Chinese Language Center of the Open University of China （OUC） participated
Between February 27-29, 2012, the Constitutive Meeting of the new ICDE Executive Committee was held in Oslo, Norway. The six members of the ICDE Executive Committee and more than 60 leaders from major universities all over Norway were in attendance. As a member of the ICDE Executive Committee and president of the Open University of China (OUC), Dr. Yang Zhijian attended the meeting and delivered a keynote speech.
On February 16, 2012, the Open University of China (OUC) and Centre National d'Enseignement à Distance (CNED) signed an agreement for educational collaboration and exchange at CNED headquarters in Poitiers. According to the agreement, the two parties will cooperate extensively in pursuing distance education initiatives including Chinese and French language instruction, as well as course sharing, resource sharing, and cooperative research and teaching exchange.
On February 20, 2012, Secretary General of the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) Gard Titlestad visited the OUC Wukesong Distance Education Building in Beijing and had a meeting with OUC President and ICDE Executive Committee member Doctor Yang Zhijian.
Doctor Yang shared with Mr. Titlestad