The undergraduate education teaching work meeting was held in Sofitel Hotel in Xiaoshan City from August 16th to 17th of 2010. this meeting aims at fully and all-around implement the national medium and long-term educational reform and development program and improve the undergraduate education of Zhejiang University in the spirit of national education work conference. Vice president Lai Maode presided the meeting with vice Party secretary of the university, Professor Zheng Qiang and the vice director of teaching work professor Yan Jianhua present at the meeting, and also present directors of relevant divisions, education department, faculty or department undergraduate teaching and all medium-level officials of undergraduate division and some branch-level officials. The meeting centers around how to improve undergraduate education with chains of leader delivery, specialized topic report, group discussion, experience sharing of relevant department and existing problems solving.
Picture 1 Vice president Lai Maode holding the meeting
Picture 2 Attendees making proposals to improve the undergraduate education
In the morning of Aug 16th, Zheng Qiang first delivered a speech about thought about education and teaching in Zhejiang University----interpretation of Zhejiang Committee of CCP and Zhejiang University suggestion of how to further strengthen and improve ideological and political education of university students. His speech revolved around the importance and function of university humanistic education to talents education, emphasizing undergraduate education creating environment for students of learning and researching out of interest and in the process of teaching teachers having sincere feeling about talents cultivation and students education by showing sincerity and care to students. He also pointed out that the next action for Zhejiang University to take would be to better the mechanism and system of university students education management and stressed the importance of practicing general education, thus laying a sound foundation for talents education and intensifying the function of public arts and sports education in university students.
Picture 3 vice secretary Zheng Qiang delivering an important speech
Then, Yan Jianhua made 3 pieces of advice about how to promote students education teaching work and improve the quality of teaching. Firstly, in this special year, after all-level discussion and research about the education teaching work, undergraduate education teaching work of Zhejiang University had completed its education mechanism through years of reform and development but needed to better its fundamental work and specific details. Secondly, enlightened by leaders’ speech in graduate ceremony reported by media, we should evaluate and improve the teaching thought again. Thirdly, as a system work, student education management needed effort put into by not only undergraduate and graduate division but also cooperation of sectors, departments and faculties. Then they complemented each other on the basis of student-oriented idea.
Picture 4. Vice director of teaching affairs Yan Jianhua making valuable proposal for undergraduate teaching
Professor Chen Jin, executive president of undergraduate division made a report on an specialized topic of “working in a team to improve undergraduate education our university.” Firstly, he interpreted the main spirit of Program Planning and national education work conference and brought forward the direction of reform based on our university’s undergraduate education results. Firstly, the enrolled student quality should be further improved by develop talent potential evaluation system to diversity the students source and give full play to the I plus 1 equal or more than 2. Secondly, the course and system quality should be further heightened by developing curriculum system from more and shallow to less and deep direction, reducing the number and improving the quality of general education courses so that students would have more spare time to think. Reform of specialized courses should follow the same way in concentration on learning based on questions, field, practice and action. The improvement of courses heavily hinged on top-ranking syllabus which must make clear the learning objective, knowledge evaluation, focus and reading material(even the number of pages) of every class, questions discussed and homework and score evaluation. Thirdly, the education and teaching quality should be further evaluated. Any application of education program of a major and syllabus of a course must be strictly approved by anonymous colleagues; course evaluation can be done spontaneously in the last course and the evaluation result should be given to every teacher as a feedback appropriately; the education and teaching management can be evaluated through input, process and output evaluation, realizing benchmarking every year. And the last to be stressed was to increase input into education and teaching, strengthen teachers’ training and education and implement the supporting policies on managing intellectual property of all courses in order to improve the undergraduate education and teaching quality.
Picture 5. president making specialized report on “working in a team to improve our university’s undergraduate education.”
Professor Lu Guodong, vice-president of undergraduate division gave a report on “innovating the mechanism, deepening the reform and making great achievements”. The report elaborated on seven aspects :1. the enrolment as a flagship 2. student education as the core 3. teacher input as the key 4. policy and atmosphere as the support 5. the teaching method 6. the way to reform teaching method 7. recent work. He first introduced the undergraduate enrolment work in 2010 and future enrolment work in 2011; then he brought forward to simplify course selection, approve the course selected from the recommended class schedule and allocate teacher randomly to make students study and study effectively; he proposed to optimize graduate recommendation and further promote and assure teaching work through graduate recommendation stimulation; he emphasized to intensify students’ comprehensive quality, promote international exchange and subjects contest and practice scientific research; he also recommended Chu Kochen Honors College to control the number of students, develop competition mechanism and intensify its feature. In the meanwhile, he demanded three changes to reform teaching method: from teaching-centered to learning-centered, from class teaching-focused to combination of curricular and extracurricular, from result evaluation-oriented to combination of result and process. He ended his speech with examination of such specific work as producing and reporting teaching achievements and quality work and making some suggestions.
Picture 6 vice president Lu Guodong making specialized report on “innovating mechanism, deepening reform and making great achievements”
Following him was Zhang Jianping, director of modern education technology center, who gave a specialized report on the analysis and thought of our university’s classical course current condition”; doctorate candidate Xiang Yangxue from the Research Center of Science and Technology interpreted “evaluation and analysis report of Zhejiang University undergraduate education and teaching work in 2009”; vice director of electrical engineering department Wei Wei and vice director of College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science Jiang Huanyi introduced in the meeting their specific work and idea about how to guarantee and improve undergraduates’ quality of their department respectively.
Picture 7. Zhang Jianping, director of modern education technology center delivering an speech vice director of computer department Chen Yue
Picture 8 Vice director of College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science Jiang Huanyi delivering an speech; Vice director of electrical engineering department Wei Wei delivering a speech
In the afternoon, divided into four groups of liberal arts, science and technology group 1 and 2 ,agriculture and medicine , attendees had a group discussion. Revolving around the theme of the meeting, they had their opinions delivered, researched and discussed about “evaluation and analysis report of Zhejiang University undergraduate education and teaching work in 2009” and the building of undergraduate education evaluation system and frankly shared and discussed their departments’ current undergraduate teaching development, work features and future prospect. Lai Maode and Zheng Qiang listened to advice and proposal put forward by every group.
Picture 9. group of liberal arts having a fierce discussion president Lai taking part in the discussion of group 1 of science and technology
Picture 10. secretary Zheng Qiang taking part in the discussion of group 2 of science and technology group of agriculture and medicine having a fierce discussion
In the morning of Aug 17th, relevant department directors of education, architectural engineering, foreign language and public hygiene analyzed current problems and next plan of their own department; appointed spokesman of every group reported the discussion; director of undergraduate division teaching quality and resource management Lou Chengfu gave a specialized report entitled “focusing on teaching method and course quality”; director of student affairs section gave a specialized report entitled “management, service and education”.
Picture 11 department representative giving a speech
Picture 12 director Lou Chengfu giving a report director Jin Haiyan giving a report
The meeting ended with speech given by Lai Maode. First he made four pieces of advice to attendees: 1. be sincere to teaching work 2. be conscientious to learn and implement the spirit of National Long and Short Term Education Reform and Development Program and national education conference, paying special attention to the spirit of the speech given by president Yang Wei in the conference and article collection in the meeting of ZJU undergraduate education teaching work in 2010 3. constantly deepen recognition of undergraduate teaching in relatively stable development to adapt his recognition to the objective and direction of building our university into top-level world university 4. affirm the positive significance of interdepartmental undergraduate education evaluation to the teaching evaluation system building in “evaluation and analysis report of Zhejiang University undergraduate education and teaching work in 2009”, better and promote the evaluation system based on the proposal made in this meeting and rank universities of similar nature to compare the system horizontally and vertically after improving the evaluation program. Later ,Lai Maode delivered important speech centering on 5 aspects: 1. targeting at being top-level in the world and internationally influential. He attached great emphasis to the “one two three” of the university, namely one system, two objectives and 3 requirements. It was in need of a perfect education system with two aims to form future leaders of all fields and create scientific knowledge and culture directing social development; the realization of the two aims demanded professor, facility and building of high quality, but talent is more important: top-level professor top-lever student and the more top-level professor, the more top-level student home and abroad we can enroll.2. we should cultivate top-level talent and advocate professors to “profess”. It was emphasized that every professor took up the least teaching workload and special professor was arranged with the same treatment as Cheung Kong Scholars and Qiushi Distinguished professors. He hoped teachers could put more energy into development of subject and major when not conferred the title of professor and young teacher could gradually become familiar with the field in listening to old professor’s class as an assistant.3. it should focus on undergraduate teaching and perfect general education system. It should make clear that general enrollment needed to be specified to a certain degree, students could choose their majors freely in the general major. We should give full scope to students who were specialized and further perfect the system and mechanism of Truth Seeking School. 4. the education resource should be optimized and the quality of general education improved. It was suggested to check the attendance rate randomly and give paper record of teacher with low attendance rate. A few core general education courses should be opened by top teachers and increased the hours of credit. Enlarged theory classes should combine with small discussion class by assistant teacher. In this way, the class quality could be deepened and teaching quality improved. 5. we should insist on the 4 principles of automation, efficiency, research-orientation and internationalization to promote teaching reform. Program taught in English would help create an internationalized atmosphere; university, department and faculty should create condition for teaching staff to exchange abroad for two, three months or half a year to improve the management. Last but not least, he put forward the problem of term system building. We should firmly insist to the four-term system and evaluate and reflect on the current condition of objective arrangement and reform of the system, making reform come up to the greatest achievement.
This meeting also made profound research into and discussion about the orientation and development of Truth Seeking School.
2010 Zhejiang University undergraduate education and teaching work meeting came up to an end successfully at noon on Aug 17th.
Picture 13 president Lai Maode delivered the concluding speech in the meeting.
