News

The Virtual Exchange (VE) China Hub, an initiative jointly led by the Online Confucius Institute at The Open University with four other institutions, is pleased to announce three events taking place in 2025 that will further strengthen international collaboration in the fields of digital education. These events provide opportunities for academic exchange, professional networking and innovation in virtual exchange practices. Click the subject title to find out about the upcoming events.

Happy New Year!

The coming Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on 29 January 2025, is ‘the Year of the Snake’ (蛇年 shé nián). To celebrate, on Tuesday 28^th January, the Online Confucius Institute at The Open University hosted their annual Chinese Lunar New Year Celebrations for OU staff and postgraduate students. Building on the success of the previous 2 years, staff were invited to join in the festive and fun celebrations. This year, attendees were able to participate in traditional Chinese ink painting with professional  Peter Cavaciuti; and water colour painting with the Chinese teacher DING Yufan, try their hand at ink calligraphy, unwind with some Tai Chi/Qigong classes by expert instructor YU Feixia  and relax to live Chinese flute performances by well-known musician GUO Yue. We also had a range of traditional Chinese snacks, hot spring rolls and refreshments for all to enjoy.  

A collaboration between The Online Confucius Institute at The Open University (OCI) and the National Extension College (NEC) has enabled absolute beginners in Mandarin Chinese to benefit from a three-part programme of Chinese taster sessions between October and November 2024. Open to NEC and OU students, 32 attendees benefited from the series of online sessions.

On the 11th November 2024, Dr Kan Qian, Director of the Online Confucius Institute (OCI), was honoured to attend the annual service of remembrance for Armistice Day in London alongside a small group of 40 Chinese participants representing the Chinese Labour Corps.  The Chinese Labour Corps has been officially recognised for at the annual Armistice Day service for the last three years.  This was largely due to a project on the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC)  led by Peng Wenlan on behalf of the Meridian Society. 
 

The Virtual Exchange (VE) China Hub is an initiative designed to promote virtual collaboration between educational institutions in China and around the globe. This hub was launched by Regina Brautlacht, Presidential Commissioner for Global Digital Learning at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences (Germany), Dr. Mirjam Hauck, President of EUROCALL and Academic Co-Lead for AI in Learning, Teaching and Assessment at The Open University (UK) and Dr. KAN Qian (阚茜), Director of the Online Confucius Institute at The Open University (UK). Professor TANG Jinlan (唐锦兰), Dean of the Institute of Online Education at Beijing Foreign Studies University (China), and and Dr CHEN Hao (陈昊), Associat Professor and Director of Business Case Centre at Shenzhen Technology University, later joined the Coordination Team as local leads in China.

On April 23rd, we held a successful teacher training day jointly organised by the Online Confucius Institute at The Open University and the Confucius Institute at Lancaster University. The hybrid online and face-to-face training day brought together over 50 people including university teachers, primary and secondary school teachers as well as PhD and undergraduate students. 21 people joined us in person on campus at Lancaster University and a further 29 joined the training day online.

We are delighted to announce that a new 30 credit module in Beginners’ Chinese is launching at The Open University.  This brand new module is now open for registration and will begin in October 2024.
Read this news item for further details. 

Happy Chinese New Year of the Dragon! (龙年 lóng nián) On Thursday 1st February, 2024, the OU Online Confucius Institute hosted another fun and engaging celebration for the Chinese Lunar New Year on the Milton Keynes campus. Open to all OU staff and postgraduate students, we were delighted to welcome over 200 people including members of the OU senior team. Attendees joined in with the festivities creating a lovely atmosphere and opportunity to catch up with one another face to face. Please click into the article to see the full story, video and photos.

This open-access special issue has recently been published by the peer reviewed Journal of China Computer-Assisted Language Learning (JCCALL). It is co-edited by Dr SHI Lijing of the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Director of the Online Confucius Institute at The Open University, Dr KAN Qian. 

Throughout May 2023, the OU Online Confucius Institute delivered a unique and exciting four-week online Virtual Exchange training programme with the Institute of Online Education at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), and UNICollaboration.org. Designed for those who have little or no experience with international virtual collaboration, the programmed introduced participants to different models of Virtual Exchange and how these can be offered to their students to give them an enriched international and intercultural experience virtually.