Since the modern distance education was piloted in 2002, after seven years' efforts, the distance education of Wuhan University has entered a new stage of development. Wuhan University puts forward that the overall goal of further education is to actively and steadily develop academic education and vigorously develop non-academic education.
In order to achieve this goal, we must solve many problems in distance education. On August 4th, the annual meeting of Modern Distance Education Learning Center of Wuhan University held in Taiyuan listed how to develop distance education steadily and how to develop it as a key topic. Professor Zhou Chuangbing, Vice-President of Wuhan University, all leaders of the Party and Government College of the College of Continuing Education, secretaries, deans, directors, leaders of learning centers all over the country and relevant personnel attended the meeting. Zhang Ping, vice governor of Shanxi Province, led Wang Lijin, deputy director of the Provincial Education Department, Fu, deputy director of Taiyuan Municipal People's Congress, Yu Zhenlong, deputy director of Taiyuan Municipal Education Bureau and many other leaders to congratulate the meeting, which reflected the local government's attention and firm support for Wuhan University's development of distance education in Shanxi Province.
Brilliant achievements in seven years' construction
Zhou Xiaoqin, vice president of School of Continuing Education of Wuhan University, divided the distance education of Wuhan University into three stages: initial stage, adjustment stage and development stage.
The initial stage is from 2002 to 2003. This stage can be said to be crossing the river by feeling the stones. There is a serious shortage of personnel, funds, equipment and experience, few enrollment majors and a small scale of running a school. The school is mainly short-distance, and there is no long-distance off-campus learning center. The school is still full-time.
The adjustment period is from 2004 to 2006. Wuhan University Online Education College was established in 2004. In 2006, the educational system was reformed and the organization was reorganized and adjusted. The College of Online Education and the College of Continuing Education merged to form the College of Continuing Education of Wuhan University (referred to as the College of Online Education for short), thus forming a unique online education management system of Wuhan University, that is, a two-level management system: the College of Online Education is responsible for enrollment, admission, unified examination, teaching plan, courseware production, technical support, teaching management supervision, graduation certificate and degree. The direction of running schools has also been adjusted. The form of running a school has changed from full-time to part-time. The focus of running a school is Hubei, covering the whole country 1 1 province. The scale of running schools has been gradually expanded, and the construction of off-campus learning centers has been continuously expanded. During this period, the basic construction of the network platform system was completed, which provided the basic conditions for carrying out online teaching and management activities.
In 2007, it began to enter the development period, the orientation and direction of enrollment work became clearer, the enrollment scale was further expanded, and the college's enthusiasm for running a school was high, and network education was demanded in succession. The school attaches great importance to running schools according to laws and regulations, and has formulated 33 online education management rules and regulations. Resource construction has also been paid attention to, and the production speed of network courseware has been accelerated. During this period, Wuhan University gave full play to its geographical advantages and began to run schools in western, remote and poor areas such as Shanxi, Yunnan and Guizhou, which contributed to the fair and balanced development of education in China.
Seven years of development can be described as brilliant. "However, there are still many problems in the scale, resource construction, learning support services and many other aspects of online education in Wuhan University." Vice President Zhou Xiaoqin summed up these problems in one sentence: the development is not fast enough and the pace is not big enough.
Finding out the problems, analyzing the causes and proposing solutions are the distinctive features of this meeting. At the conference, participants conducted extensive exchanges and discussions on enrollment, teaching, guidance and student management, and reached a consensus on the future development of online education in Wuhan University.
The mode of running a school will be diversified.
A set of figures reflects the scale of Wuhan University's online education: from 2002 to 2008, Wuhan University enrolled 26,699 students and trained more than 0.5 million professionals 1 10,000 students at present. Compared with the number of tens of thousands of registered students in other pilot universities, this scale is far from the status of Wuhan University.
The scale of running a school is the basis of the development of online education. Zhou Chuangbing, vice president of Wuhan University, said that development is the last word. For continuing education, the first thing is to have a certain school scale. Without scale, there is no development, and without development, there is no benefit in running a school. Therefore, actively expanding the channels of running schools and promoting the improvement of the scale and efficiency of online education are the primary tasks of the development of online education in Wuhan University.
The small scale of running a school is related to the small number of learning centers in Wuhan University, which directly restricts the development of online education. At present, there are only 25 off-campus learning centers in Wuhan University, and the development of learning centers is not balanced. Only six schools enroll more than 400 students each year, and only five schools enroll more than 200 students each year. The layout is also unreasonable. There is only one learning center in Hubei province, which leads to great pressure on enrollment and student management in Hubei.
In this regard, Wuhan University, led by the school office, is actively planning to establish a new off-campus learning center, including continuing to run schools for the central and western regions, and injecting new vitality into online education. The school will also take a series of measures such as selecting excellent tutors and excellent off-campus learning centers, give full play to the role of existing learning centers, and mobilize the enthusiasm of learning centers for running schools.
This industry contains a large number of students, which will be further discussed. Wuhan University proposes to encourage colleges and campus learning centers to actively run schools for the industry system. In this regard, many disciplines and specialties of the School of Economics and Management, such as the School of Water Resources and Hydropower, the School of Electrical Engineering, the School of Civil Engineering, the School of Law, the School of Surveying and Mapping, etc., have unique advantages. Many colleges have done a lot of work for the running of the industry system, which has been welcomed by the industry system.
Making full use of high-quality social resources to achieve mutual benefit and win-win through co-construction and cooperation has become another important idea for Wuhan University to expand its school-running channels. Wuhan University will try to cooperate with the public service system. In addition to self-built learning centers, some co-built learning centers will be developed to accelerate the development of online education in various forms and modes.
Some problems in the enrollment of online education have aroused the vigilance of the school. "The premise of expanding the scale of running a school is to standardize enrollment and avoid risks." Vice President Zhou Chuangbing warned that we must firmly grasp the development direction of online education, make clear the development orientation, and persist in developing online education for on-the-job employees. It is necessary to strengthen the management of online education enrollment, adhere to the "four unified principles" of enrollment work, that is, uniformly apply for and approve enrollment plans, uniformly print enrollment brochures, uniformly organize enrollment examinations, uniformly issue admission notices, and resolutely put an end to individuals and agencies acting as agents for enrollment.
Promoting sustainable development with resource construction
To maintain the sustainable development of online education, resource construction is the key, but the reality faced by Wuhan University is that resource construction lags behind. Taking network courseware as an example, after five years' hard construction, 548 online courses have been completed, involving 16 departments and 30 majors, and more than 500 teachers have participated in the construction. Although there are many online courses in Wuhan University, due to many enrollment majors, changes in teaching plans and courses, and technical updates, online education resources still cannot meet the needs of students' daily online learning. Moreover, due to the decentralized running of schools, courseware resources are difficult to share.
In order to solve this problem, Wuhan University proposes to attach importance to the construction of online education text resources, and all colleges should attach importance to the design of online education curriculum system. Online education curriculum should meet the needs of adult employees to update their knowledge, enhance their skills, and constantly learn and improve, and the curriculum design should reflect pertinence and practicality.
In addition, we will also focus on strengthening the construction and development of digital resources for online education. Organize and publish high-quality courseware and online teaching materials as soon as possible, speed up courseware production, and link courseware production with enrollment. Before next year, the courseware production rate of all old majors should reach 100%, including the completion rate; Strive to reach 100% of all professional courseware coverage in one or two years. Wuhan University will also strengthen the construction of top-quality online education courses, actively declare national-level top-quality courses, and strive to achieve zero breakthrough in the national online education economics course evaluation this year.
The hardware system will also be upgraded. The network platform system of Wuhan University was built in 2004, and it has been five years now. When the platform was built, it was designed to go to school full-time, and the distance was close. With the development of modern distance education and the change of enrollment objects, as well as the expansion of distance education outside the province, the transformation of local platforms has been difficult to meet the needs of distance education development. Wuhan University will completely transform and update the current platform system, and the technical department of the College of Continuing Education is conducting research. After the study, we will come up with a specific transformation plan to win the support of the school.
In order to promote resource sharing, the College of Continuing Education has issued management measures, and is coordinating and communicating with relevant departments of the school to solicit opinions from the school repeatedly. This management method will be further improved to effectively promote resource sharing.
Strengthen learning support services
Providing students with learning support services is an important part of online education and teaching activities, and it is the basis to ensure the quality of online education. Zhou Xiaoqin, vice president, said: "The reality is that online education and learning support services are now the weakest link in our school."
According to the statistics of the Institute of Continuing Education, from 2006 to 2008, 30% of the support service records using learning platform technology were that users were not familiar with the use of learning platform and could not open the required resources and learning courses, and 30% were unable to open online courses because teachers did not give guidance. This data shows that the ability of students and teachers to use the learning platform needs to be improved urgently, and it also reflects the serious shortage of learning guidance activities.
In this regard, Wuhan University will strengthen the school-running responsibility of colleges and learning centers and give full play to their roles. Colleges and centers should implement specialized personnel to be responsible for students' learning support services. Unified requirements have been put forward for all schools, strengthening the inspection of teachers' online learning guidance activities, and taking the inspection results as one of the important indicators of the year-end teaching assessment of online education, and resolutely replacing teachers with poor learning guidance activities. The school will establish a teacher information database, requiring all colleges to regard those teachers with strong sense of responsibility, high professional level and good learning guidance as the main teachers on which online education and teaching depend. The school will continue to promote the implementation of online learning guidance activities by selecting excellent online learning guidance teachers.
For each learning center, it is required to do a good job in the attendance of students' concentrated learning, as well as the inspection and statistics of students' online learning and homework completion, and take the results as an important basis for students' usual performance assessment. The College of Continuing Education will compile a learning guide for online education students as soon as possible to help them get started easily, master the use of learning platforms and improve their autonomous learning ability.
In terms of teacher guidance, some schools have formed mature practices. The College of Civil Engineering and Architecture will bring all teachers' teaching work into the year-end assessment, and graduate education, undergraduate education, adult education and online education will uniformly implement year-end bonus distribution and post allowance. The college also conducts regular inspections, reminds and criticizes teachers who fail to conduct online guidance in time according to regulations, puts forward management opinions on the problems existing in the teaching guidance process, and stops their guidance work if the circumstances are serious.
The experience of the learning center will be promoted.
The learning centers of Wuhan University have made great efforts in enrollment publicity, student learning support, student status and daily management, and their fruitful experience will be popularized.
The student scale of Wuchang Learning Center is among the best in Wuhan University Learning Center, with more than 5,000 students. Among more than 4,000 students who have graduated, the graduation rate is 98%, 9 1% was awarded bachelor's degree, and 14% was admitted to the national admission line after taking the unified postgraduate examination. This achievement is related to the unique teaching measures adopted by the learning center. According to the whole-course training scheme of combining academic education with vocational education, the center offers vocational skills training courses according to the actual demand of the job market while teaching professional courses, aiming at enabling students to have both professional basic theoretical knowledge and employment skills. Pay attention to details in management and education. Students in online education are not only complicated in structure, but also uneven and difficult to manage. The center has put forward many measures in this regard. For poor students, they never give up easily, which not only touched their parents, but also established a good reputation for the learning center.
In the first enrollment process in the spring of 2006, Shanxi Learning Center once set a record of zero, and now, both the number of students and the number of registered students have become the first of all online universities in Shanxi Province. This change is related to the enrollment strategy of the center. In the enrollment of nursing majors, they first communicate with the health department and strive for the support of government departments. The leaders of the health department clearly pointed out in the TV media that the online education in Wen Pin of Wuhan University is recognized by the state. Then, the center published a report entitled "New Fashion of Adult Charging" in Shanxi Evening News, the largest circulation in the province, explaining to the public that online education has been recognized by the state and local governments from different aspects. At the same time, the center put nearly 6.5438+0.5 million yuan in advertisements in major media in the city, which greatly improved the social influence of Wuhan University's online education and paved the way for the smooth development of enrollment.
Hangzhou Learning Center emphasizes cultivating students' initiative in autonomous learning. According to the teaching requirements of the course, the center helps students to draw up feasible learning plans, and gives suggestions on the time arrangement and learning methods of students' autonomous learning by means of centralized counseling. Due to the diversity of learning forms in distance education, the learning center will advise students to choose a learning method suitable for their own characteristics according to their own habits and conditions. According to the level test of the joint entrance examination and the students' own wishes, the center divides the students of all majors into study groups, and each group has a special study leader, and establishes a QQ learning exchange group on the Internet to provide a modern platform for students' learning exchange, so that students can integrate into the atmosphere of distance online learning in multiple ways and channels. The center also organizes students' symposiums, tea in the teahouse, mountain climbing and other activities, which strengthens the contact between students and the learning center and the exchange and communication between students.
Zhang Minxian, secretary of the Party Committee of the School of Continuing Education of Wuhan University, said: "Talented, talented. The College of Continuing Education will further improve its service work and attract the attention of all teachers, students and even colleges and universities in China with excellent results, excellent achievements and excellent operation. I believe that after solving the problems in progress, the online education of Wuhan University will usher in a new stage of development. "