Date: March 6th, 2019
Author: Yang Qiping

A training session for Guangdong provincial open online courses was held at JNU on March 5 under the guidance of the Guangdong Bureau of Education. It was sponsored by the Open Online Courses League of Colleges and Universities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. More than 230 representatives of more than 50 colleges and universities attended the session, which targeted project teams and universities approved for the 2018 provincial series of online open courses.

JNU Vice President Zhang Ronghua and Zheng Wen, director of the Higher Education Department of the Guangdong Bureau of Education, spoke at the session. Keynote addresses were given by Xie Youru, assistant dean of the School of Information Technology in Education at South China Normal University; Zhou Hongchun, secretary-general of the online open courses league; administrators at colleges and universities, and team leaders of national excellent open online courses. The training session aimed to improve course-building and create first-class online courses with Guangdong characteristics.

(Vice President Zhang speaking at the session.)

Speaking on school characteristics, Zhang pointed out that JNU would proactively support the league's construction. The league currently consists of 62 universities, including five in Hong Kong and Macau, and offers 441 online courses. Under the guidance of the Guangdong Bureau of Education, and with the idea of co-building, sharing, openness and innovation, the league intends to integrate quality educational resources in the Greater Bay Area, as well as encourage co-construction and sharing of courses and resources by colleges and universities in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau. The league will also promote the development of university clusters in the Greater Bay Aarea and contribute wisdom and strength to create a new level of world higher education.

(Zheng wen speaking at the session.)

Zheng outlined development strategies of Guangdong's open online courses. Course clusters will be established creatively through such methods as submitting course construction plans, oral defense and expert review.

In the report Construction of Open Online Courses in the 2.0 Era, Xie explained in detail the purpose, content, structure, resource and study support services of open online courses. She also described the evaluation of design methods, development tools and the development process.

Zhou provided course-building guidance to teachers, explaining the basic requirements for the production of open online courses; passing on experience about the production process of high-quality courses; and introducing commonly used course platforms and alliance platforms in China and abroad, as well as course-launching requirements.

Well-known Chinese service providers of online open courses construction -- chaoxing (超星), zhihuishu (智慧树), 51ZhiKe (51制课), weikeChina (微课•中国) -- described the construction and services of open online courses.