The 4th AAOU Presidential Speech Series Webinar was held online on 6 October 2020 with the theme of “Quality Assurance and Certification.” Dr. Darojat, chairman of the Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU) and president of Universitas Terbuka of Indonesia, gave an opening speech. Professor Pachonklaew from Thailand Sukhothai Open University chaired the webinar, and vice president Lin Yu from the Open University of China (OUC) and president of Sri Lanka Open University, Professor Ariadurai, were invited to give keynote speeches.
In order to ensure that AAOU members and other educational institutions could engage in the normal and orderly education and teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, the AAOU organised a series of online academic discussions during the webinar. Presidents and professionals from the relevant domains of the AAOU’s member institutions of higher education were invited to attend the event and share their professional knowledge and valuable experience with the aim of strengthening contact between institutions of open and distance education in Asia and improving the quality of education.
Lin Yu gave a basic introduction to the characteristics, system, and scale of the OUC. He described the university’s basic concepts and its quality assurance tasks from the six perspectives of standards, norms, monitoring, evaluation, supervision, and reform, including measures for the establishment and management of majors, teaching process norms, measures for textbook management, quality factors, and annual quality report, and the evaluation of operations in OUC branches. He also introduced the core elements of documents such as Several Opinions on Improving Teaching Quality at the OUC and OUC Management Measures for Education and Teaching Reform-Related Pilot Projects (Trial).
During the webinar’s “quality certification” session, Lin Yu emphasised three key factors: exemptions from courses or examinations, degree English examinations, and joint degree awarding. He explained the different levels of the OUC’s courses, the contents and requirements regarding exemption from studying and examinations, and introduced joint degree-awarding institutions of higher learning such as China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing Technology and Business University, and Dongbei University of Finance and Economics.
Professor Ariadurai introduced Sri Lanka's policy guidelines to cope with COVID-19 and the measures they had taken to ensure education quality at both the national and institutional level. For example, the importance of open and distance education in the entire education system in Sri Lanka has been further enhanced in order to promote a reform plan from open and distance education at the national level. Real-time distance teaching has been adopted to improve teaching efficiency and the coverage of education services during the pandemic. Professor Ariadurai discussed problems like technological bottlenecks and teaching quality that might be faced during real-time distance teaching and underlined the importance of improving the quality of open education and further integrating it into the field of mainstream higher education.
In the interaction session, the participants were active in asking questions, touching upon the specific measures taken by the two universities to ensure the quality of education and teaching, the management of online distance teaching, the setup and management of study centres, and employment opportunities for students.
The webinar attracted a very positive response. The speeches given by Lin Yu and professor Ariadurai had comprehensive, accurate contents, and were well received by the audience. By joining in the online discussion, the university shared its valuable experience of learning quality assurance and certification with its counterparts in international open and distance education, demonstrating the OUC’s active commitment to international organisations as an AAOU executive member. Furthermore, it further improved the OUC’s influence in open and distance education circles in Asia.
By Du Qian, OUC