On November 28, 2020, the online teaching wrap-up meeting of Peking University and the seminar on the 5th anniversary of the establishment of the Center for Excellent Teaching and Learning with the theme of “Future-oriented Teaching Development” was held in Zhongguanyuan Global Village PKU. Hao Ping, President of PKU, and Gong Qihuang, Executive Vice President, Provost, and Dean of the Graduate School, attended the meeting. Over 260 people participated in the meeting, including leaders of PKU’s teaching administration and service departments such as the Department of Educational Affairs, Graduate School, and Office of International Relations, deans of schools and departments, and representatives of outstanding teachers. Directors of centers for excellent teaching and learning of more than 20 Chinese mainland universities, including Tsinghua University, Nankai University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Science and Technology of China, and Beijing Normal University, also attended the meeting. Their counterparts from universities of the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as representatives of international organizations including the British Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the British Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) participated the online exchange. They explored the prospects of future-oriented teaching development together. The meeting was moderated by Wang Xiaoyue, Director of the Office of the Provost.

The meeting

Hao Ping presented the awards to the departments responsible for online teaching administration in 2020, the schools and departments as well as representatives of teachers contributing outstanding online teaching cases, teachers completing the teaching development program for young teachers, the new teaching idea project team, the winning teachers of the innovative teaching and learning paper prize, and the outstanding organizers and winning teams of the innovative teaching and learning application contest.

Hao Ping presents awards to individuals and departments

Hao Ping takes photo with award-winning teachers

In his speech, Gong Qihuang summarized the general picture of online teaching of Peking University in 2020. He pointed out that in the spring semester, Peking University put forward “5+N” available teaching approaches based on the principle of “seeking truth and effectiveness”. PKU improved the quality of online teaching in an all-round way and completed the online teaching tasks in the spring semester by using a variety of approaches and means through establishing a collaborative working mechanism, providing systematic training and comprehensive technical support, promoting the exchange of online teaching experience and academic research, and enhancing cooperation and exchanges with world-class universities. The regular epidemic prevention and control in the autumn semester put forward new requirements for online teaching. Offline teaching was restored for more than 6,000 courses, but some students could not return to the campus. The priority of this semester is to realize seamless connection of online and offline teaching in all the courses, ensuring that PKU classrooms can support the automatic recording and live broadcasting of courses. Gong Qihuang pointed out that education and teaching in the post-COVID-19 era should be more down-to-earth and future-oriented. He demanded PKU make sustained efforts to forge ahead in improving teachers’ educational ability, teaching support services, and research into teaching and education. He put forward three proposals for the development of teaching in PKU. The first is to continue to improve a variety of training programs, optimize existing courses related to teaching development, build a multi-level professional training system for PKU’s teaching development capabilities in an all-round way, and expand new ways for internationalized teaching development; the second is to further promote the application of information technology in teaching, improve the supporting service platform for the teaching environment and resource construction, and promote the in-depth integration of information technology and educational technology; the third is to provide teachers and students with effective resources and the latest educational philosophies and teaching methods on the basis of conducting research by taking into account Peking University’s education and teaching reforms and the development of international education towards the future.

Gong Qihong delivers a speech

Che Hao, the Deputy Dean of the Law School, summed up and reflected upon the online teaching experience as a representative of the schools contributing outstanding online teaching cases by elaborating on the Law School’s exploration of diversified online teaching during the COVID-19 outbreak. He shared the view that to do a good job in online teaching, schools first and foremost should make preparations as soon as possible and come up with feasible plans in advance. Secondly, schools should improve relevant management measures to actively respond to all kinds of problems that may arise in the online teaching process. At the same time, diversified ways of online teaching should be explored, such as live broadcasting, pre-recorded courses, and a combination of multiple teaching methods.

Che Hao makes a speech

As a representative of teachers contributing excellent online teaching cases, Professor Peng Bo of the School of Journalism & Communication argued that teachers should use multimedia resources more widely, such as WeChat official accounts, Toutiao accounts, and douyin accounts, by citing relevant teaching practice and results of the “Introduction to New Media” course. He called on fellow teachers to be devoted to education wholeheartedly and use the Internet to deliver better education. He shared his unique insights into the role of the digital technology development in reconstructing teaching processes, reshaping teaching methods, and redefining campus, classrooms and teaching.

Peng Bo makes a speech

As the representative of the teachers completing the teaching development program for young teachers, Lei Ting of the College of Engineering reviewed and shared the experience of participating in the young teachers training. He said that the PKU young teachers training pointed out the direction for young teachers and introduced feasible teaching methods, providing an important platform for young teachers to learn and seek advice from senior teachers. He also encouraged young teachers to make the most of the knowledge they had acquired from the training and apply it to their teaching and research practice, so as to inherit and carry forward the fine tradition and manner of Peking University.

Lei Ting makes a speech

Dr. Wei Ziyuan of the School of Archeology and Museology, an excellent student participating in the teaching assistant training program, shared his suggestions and views on the work of teaching assistants by citing his own experience. Wei Ziyuan believed that teaching assistants should identify the duties of their work and build a bridge for communication between teachers and students. He put forward three suggestions for the teaching assistant work, including improving the emergency preparedness ability related to the work.

Wei Ziyuan makes a speech

Zhang Weiguang of the School of Basic Medical Sciences, a representative of the winning teachers of the innovative teaching and learning application contest, gave a themed report on the “Innovative Teaching Experiments in Human Anatomy”. He shared PKU’s strengths in the teaching resources of “human anatomy” and introduced the integrated offline teaching combining theoretical study and practice and the efforts in applying for teaching patents.

Zhang Weiguang makes a speech

Sun Hua, Director of the Center for Excellent Teaching and Learning, reported the relevant progress of PKU teaching development joint research and innovative practice program, and summed up and reflected on the Center in terms of the teaching training, classroom management, Internet teaching platform, multimedia and video course resource construction, and the construction and guarantee of online teaching during the COVID-19 outbreak in particular. He also laid out the vision for the development of future-oriented teaching reform.

Sun Hua makes a speech

In the afternoon, the session of themed discussion kicked off. There were six parallel sessions, namely “Future-oriented Teaching Development of University Teachers”, “Research and Development of Teaching Ability Framework for University Teachers”, “Innovative Teaching and Learning in Universities: Practice, Innovation and Development”, “Teaching and Talent Training: Experience, Thoughts and Outlook”, “Future-oriented Writing Teaching and Guidance”, and “Medical Education Innovation and Practice”. In each session, experts and scholars from Peking University and other universities were invited to share their views, reviewing current teaching and looking forward to the development of future teaching in universities around respective topic.

The meeting was more than a wrap-up meeting of PKU’s online teaching. Rather, it was also a seminar on university teaching in the post-COVID-19 era and a kick-off meeting for future-oriented teaching development. Universities reached agreements on a number of cooperation projects in the meeting. The participants said that they would continue to collaborate in research, forge ahead in pioneering and innovating, and jointly promote the reform and development of education and teaching in the new era.

 

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