At present, higher distance education has developed by leaps and bounds and achieved unprecedented results. However, the rapid development has also brought some problems.
1. scale: there are as many as 67 pilot colleges, and the planning is expanding rapidly.
Distance education in China's higher education has developed very rapidly. 65438-0998 The Ministry of Education officially approved Tsinghua University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Zhejiang University and Hunan University as the first batch of national modern distance education pilot institutions; In 2000, the number of modern distance education pilot colleges and universities soared to 3 1 institute; In 200 1 year, there were 67 institutions approved by the Ministry of Education to carry out distance education.
Pilot colleges and universities allow social funds to participate, and they can enroll students independently, determine the enrollment scale independently, choose their own majors, set up local schools independently, and set their own charging standards. Students in distance education will get the national recognized university diploma ... These factors have greatly stimulated and accelerated the development of distance education. At present, more than 2,000 off-campus learning centers have been built in pilot universities, and their geographical distribution basically covers all parts of the country; Academic education has been offered, including graduate students, junior college students, undergraduates and general junior college students, with hundreds of majors; At present, there are more than 6,543,800 students studying through distance education.
It can be seen that in a few short years, China's higher distance education has grown from scratch, from its inception to prosperity, with amazing development speed and unprecedented achievements.
2. The survival way of distance education.
Modern distance education has just started in China, which is an extraordinary "leap-forward" development, so there are some quality problems. At present, there are basically several teaching modes of distance education: one is the same classroom teaching mode as the existing teaching mode, and the other is the teaching mode combining face-to-face teaching with network teaching; The other is the mode of separating teachers and students in time and space, and teaching is carried out entirely through the network or multimedia CD-ROM. Completely separated teaching is actually not a complete online education, but online self-study.
In order to improve the teaching quality of online education as soon as possible, the Ministry of Education designated 2003 as "the year of quality assurance system construction of distance education". Relevant leaders of the Ministry of Education have clearly pointed out that the teaching quality has become the biggest obstacle to the progress of modern distance education, and they believe that it is necessary to "gradually establish a public service system for off-campus distance education, standardize management, and strengthen resource sharing and quality control", which is exactly the system and quality standard that is very lacking in the construction of online colleges at present. The Ministry of Education has begun to formulate teaching standards for online education, raise the threshold for running schools, and intensify the quality inspection of online colleges in colleges and universities, such as organizing experts to certify the majors and courses of online colleges, evaluating teachers, teaching facilities, multimedia courseware construction and established off-campus teaching points, regularly checking the training quality of students in online colleges, and disqualifying unqualified online colleges.
3. Examination: "Wide" must be "strict"
The enrollment conditions of higher distance education in pilot colleges are very loose, which is called "loose"; Only by passing the examination can we ensure the quality of distance education and the "gold content" of academic diplomas, which is called "strict examination".
In order to standardize the teaching and examination of distance education, the Ministry of Education entrusts the Distance Open Education Center to undertake the invigilation of the final examination of the second semester of the 2002-2003 school year in various teaching points of distance education in Hunan University. This is the first time in the country to use the distance education service system for exams. This kind of examination discipline is very strict, which makes cheaters have no chance to take advantage of it and greatly maintains the seriousness of distance education.
4. Diploma "Gold Content": From Questioning to Accepting
Whether the diploma obtained by distance education has enough "gold content" is the most concerned issue for most students. According to the statistics of the Network Education Research Center of Renmin University, 76% of the students choose "Network University" because they took a fancy to the Renmin University diploma issued by it.