To implement the national education guidelines, adhere to a philosophy of “People-centered Education” 育人为本, advance the students’ comprehensive development, promote teaching reform and innovative solutions in the new era, and enhance the overall educational quality through a series of research and practices at AXHU, the “University Students’ All-rounded Development Project” (alongside its administrative office) and the AXHU Institution for Quality Education were launched, in 2006 and 2007.
With that, Center for Quality Education Research at AXHU, which focuses on the college students’ all-around quality of performance, [by merging with the two sectors above] was built up in 2009. And the Center was selected to become the pilot construction unit for the critical programs in humanities and social sciences of Anhui provincial institutions of higher education in 2011. One year later, through the assessment and evaluation of Anhui Provincial Education Department, which was mandated as its key research agency at AXHU in Dec 2012.
Overall Objective
According to the MOE’s circular Outline of the National Medium- and Long-Term Programme for Education Reform and Development (2010-2020), which points out “The strategic theme of China’s educational reform and development will highlight the ‘Humanism-connected Initiative’ to inclusively educate the high-capacity college students” and insists on “People-centered Education” to boost their comprehensive capacities in the real world, the Center, by making research into high-performance modes, ways and solutions, aims to establish a platform integrated with scientific research, professionals training, information exchange, spinning off and outreach, as well as counselling services.
To establish educational & research regime for college students’ overall development with right direction and strategic themes
Integrating theoretical research into practical applications, the Center designs a five-year construction planning to put its thematic research into place, involving: educational environment, goal and path; pedagogical nature and feature; teaching contents, modes, and methods; curricular structure, practicums and internships; personnel resources and sustainable development of academic staff; assessment system for quality education; China’s private universities’ potentials and characteristics, and more.
To be aligned with effectiveness and creativeness according to transformable strategies
Combining the real-world problems and questions in the context of Quality Education, the Center expands its scope in breadth and depth, highlighting the critical research programs such as training objectives, cultivation modes, and evaluation system, and focuses its efforts on the breakthroughs in the areas of the most pressing issues and decision-making services to drive educational development and to nurture college students’ adaptive growth.
With the rapid social and economic development worldwide in this latest spate, which gives top priority over the graduating students with strengths and edges in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center’s pivotal educational practice aims to foster their applied abilities in this field.
Of the significance, commonality and particularity, with which the basic practices and innovation of the quality education is to be put into execution at the private university, the Center there attaches a great importance to the staffing, campus safety and community stability all the time.
To Realize the Basic Functions as a Key Humanities and Social Sciences Research Base
1) Academic research and creation
The Center aims to conduct the high-grade scholarly research and create valuable academic facts as many as possible by pooling the academic resources and strengths from around the Anhui province and beyond.
2) Spinning off and outreaching
The Center, via plenty of research and practices to hash out the bottleneck issues related, shall act as the exemplary model to advance the level of the Quality Education and to expand its influence in radiation.
3) Staffing to efficient service operations
The Center, based on the past years’ practices and research on quality education, is to convene and train the like-minded early-careers or staff candidates to structure its research & work group.
4) Information exchange
Localizing the information resources at home and abroad, the Center is to execute the in-depth analysis and research, communicate new experiences, and adopt generative concepts and inspiring ideas.
5) Counselling services
By means of survey, academic reports and projects planning, the Center can provide the relevant social sectors or local community organizations with some advising services and insights as well.
Research Orientation
On average, the Quality Education, in a lot of ways, is closely related to the pedagogical goal, teaching mode, and additional standards of talents and candidates at the China’s education and training institutions across all levels, and also to the design of the talent cultivation system with Chinese characteristics. In recent years, it is one of the pivotal tasks to improve the level of Quality Education and increase the college students’ comprehensive abilities, aligned with the higher education institution’s mission and the pressing demand of high-quality graduating students in the situations of China’s economic construction and social development. Thus, the Center spotlights the real-time issues to put forth the four-fold initiative as follows.
Ideological and Ethical Education
The orderly and sound evolution of Quality Education is, to some extent, according to the overall educational level of higher learning, during which its ideological and ethical education is always placed 1st and plays a critical role in shaping college students’ life belief, worldview, value orientation, and moral attitude, with which they, who could become the representative constructors of all ages and responsible fellows of future generations, will steadfastly follow up with the socialist road with Chinese characteristics.
Since 2006, the Planning 2005 has been fully carried out at the Center, which, along with the AXHU Faculty Groups for Ideological and Political Teaching & Research, completed a milestone teaching reform in the course Ideological and Political Theory. More specifically, which aggregates across the teaching contents available to form a teaching system of “Theme + Feature + Modularization,” comprising 4 themes, 18 features, and 46 modules. The design of modular structure or “all-access bundle” [self-paced advancement while learning] consists of teaching purposes and tasks, theoretical knowledge, practical instructions, methodologies of teaching and learning, catalogue of reference books and data sets, evaluation of learning outcomes, etc., which puts forward a three-pronged teaching object (involving cognition, faith, competence) in an effort to help the students grasp knowledge, keep faith, cultivate interest and increase application ability, while its practical teaching design is gravitating toward the details of writing textbooks and syllabuses. Moreover, the Center has also worked out a series of research and experiment in the areas of teaching method and evaluation system.
Humanities and Social Sciences
Overall, at the center of college students’ well-rounded development is the Humanistic Quality, whose research is around the students’ additional cultivation (besides specialized education), comprising feelings, mental health, arts, tradition and culture, civic virtue and etiquette, thinking methods, by which to make college students comprehensively obtain humanistic knowledge, access, essence and spirit. This field’s research should be on the basis of the curricular construction and school-specific training activities, and actively probe into the high-efficient approaches and scientific measures. Several years later, the Center has created an integrated platform (3+1 mode), i.e., tracing a mainline of “To grow and develop (base); To attain standards of talents and professionals (pivot); To become high-quality citizenship (objective),” plus the extra curricular, extended training and social engagement. Nowadays, the Center has instituted the Regulations on Quality Education Extension Courses and Implementation Methods of Academic Credits System for Internships and Fieldwork, so as to put what the current students have learned at school into practice in the work place.
Furthermore, it has, with an aim of improving the students’ hands-on application in respect to their humanistic cultivation, established a bundle of Quality Education-based laboratories and training bases on and off campus. And the Center has achieved a package of findings and transformation results, such as the Research on Students’ Well-rounded Development at Private Universities, which was awarded the second prize at the Anhui Provincial Teaching Achievements Evaluation and Assessment.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
The competence of innovation and business start-ups is as the core quality [focus and foothold] for the current college students in the new era. Thus, the Center’s educational action aims to observe the students’ potentials, to highlight their notable characteristics, and to shape their highly spiritual world. Additionally, it has also provided the innovative talents of excellence with instructions and training in the relation to the necessary knowledge, skills, capacities and psychological quality as for the self-employed start-ups to make fortune for social progress.
In fact, the educational concepts in the context of higher education are varying in the different times. Seeing from the emerging trend in the modern educational system of higher learning from around the world, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship has become its organic component to boom the aspects of development. The Center has aggregated and designed the relevant outcomes-driven curricular structure and innovative teaching methods [reform and practices] based on the labs or training bases for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education.
Being mainly engaged with the courses development and practicum and field works, concentrating on the training approaches and solutions regarding the current students’ innovative spirit and creative abilities, the Center integrates the targeted, real-time scientific research into educational practices through field experiences.
Comparative Studies of General Education in the World
Historically, the General Education is an important educational tradition of the institutions of international higher education (especially in the West), and has a critical impact on the current students of both quality and ability, which has focused on the process during which the students’ fundamental personalities and characters could be fully formed so that they can be well-prepared in academic research and applications for their tomorrow’s career experience. The Center-based research is also centered at the educational history and the theoretical research findings (regarding the absence or weakness in particular areas) at the higher learning institutions of both the United States and the UK (incl. other representative institutions across the world), with that to enhance the overall level of the quality education in China.
In summary, the Center applies the four research turns above-discussed: to choose the pivotal issues of present-day quality education to conduct targeted research; to combine the characteristics of operation and practices of higher education to build up research platform and specific research groups; to expand the access to knowledge and research transformation and generate its social values and positive effects.
/Academic Board:
//Institute for Research of College Students’ Ideological, Moral Education
///Base for Ideological and Political Education
//Research Center for College Students’ Humanistic Quality (incl. Esthetic, Mental Health, Safety Education, Sinology, Civic Culture, PE)
///Base for College Students’ Quality Development
//Research Institute for College Students’ Abilities in Innovation and Business Start-ups
///Business Start-ups Center for College Students
///Innovation Lab for College Students
//Comparative Research Center for General Education
///Research on University Students’ All-rounded Development (publications)
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