On May 19th, with the theme of "Construction of All English-taught Major and High-Quality All-English Online Courses", the International Business College (IBC) of South China Normal University (SCNU) held the 2015 "All Foreign Language Online Course Construction Report Conference" in the International Course Laboratory. At the meeting, four college teachers who had returned from overseas training reported and solicited opinions on their respective curriculum construction results so as to improve the quality of curriculum construction. Presided over by the Vice Dean Yun Qiaoyun, Vice President Shen Wenhuai of SCNU presented and delivered a speech. Deputy Director Zhang Changhai of Teaching Affairs Department, leaders of IBC, including Dean Wu Jianli, Vice Deans Chai Shaoming, Yun Qiaoyun, David Bel, and relevant teachers attended the meeting.
Led by an international course development team, IBC set up 30 all-English online courses supported by modern online education technology like Moodle. And in the future, we’ll use technical means to build an all-English finance major. At this point, 30 English-taught online classes consist of three kinds of courses: advanced language, general education and professional core courses, which cover not only the main body of full English-taught finance major, but share with the business and economic management majors.
Aiming to ensure the quality and progress of all-English online courses, IBC established an all-English online curriculum leadership group and a team of curriculum-building teachers at the end of 2013. Documents as International Business College All-English Online Courses Charter, International Business College All-English Online Course Construction Plan, International Business College All-English Online Course Construction and Audit Standards etc. are formulated to promote the curriculum construction step by step .
At this meeting, four teachers separately reported on their achievements in studying abroad, demonstrated the online courses that had been completed on the Moodle platform, and lectured a chapter of their major courses: Ms Zhuang Jingyao briefly elaborated on Macroeconomics, Ms. Ma Yingyi Business Environment, Ms. Zhuang Huijuan Business Communication , and Mr. Mao Rongkun Academic Paper Writing. It was impressed to see the innovative educational technology, flexible and effective teaching methods, fluent English or French competence, as well as a large number of all-English online course achievements were well received by the participants.
Vice President Shen Wenhuai first affirmed the achievements of the college's curriculum construction, and gave praise and encouragement to the pragmatic performance in curriculum building and the teachers’ lecturing. In the meantime, he put forward some suggestions on the curriculum construction of IBC from the overall situation of school teaching reform and development, including rationalize the the curriculum expert consultants and establish a unified online teaching platform for university, etc. Dean Wu Jianli expressed gratitude to university leaders and related departments for their support to IBC's curriculum construction, took the opportunity reviewed the course of curriculum construction, and further clarified the goal and development direction of curriculum construction. Afterwards Deputy Director Zhang Changhai, Deputy Dean Chai Shaoming, Yuan Qiaoyun and David Bel made relevant statements.
In terms of the future development of IBC as a whole, we are expected to make efforts in two areas: one is working to improve the norms and standards for the construction of IBC’s all-English major and all-English online courses, so that we can ensure the course quality get improved from the institutional level; the second is to expedite the construction of a university-unified digital teaching platform to provide better convenience for expanding and sharing digital teaching resources.
Since the end of 2013, IBC of South China Normal University has established the system of all-English online course reporting review meeting system. And this meeting is the first school-level meeting. Through one afternoon’s report and discussion, the meeting fully exchanged excellent experiences, studied the curriculum construction problems, explored measures and suggestions to further improve the quality of curriculum construction, which would hopefully to improve the quality of foreign language curriculum construction and motivate our teachers.