On June 8, the International Institute of Online Education (IIOE) Global Partnership Webinar was successfully held by the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI). Director of ICHEI and Secretary-General of the IIOE Secretariat Mr. Ming LI, Executive Deputy Director of ICHEI and Deputy Secretary-General of the IIOE Secretariat Research Assistant Professor HAN Wei, and other members of ICHEI attended the webinar at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech).

Other guests included representatives from UNESCO, the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO, the Shenzhen Education Bureau. Also in attendance were delegates from ICHEI’s domestic partner enterprises, higher education institutions, and partner HEIs in Asia and Africa.

The webinar was chaired by IIOE Chief Expert Mr. Lim Cher PING. During the opening ceremony, speeches were given by Director of Division for Cooperation, Partnership of Africa Department Mr. Yue DU, Deputy Secretary-General of Chinese National Commission for UNESCO Mr. Jiagui ZHOU, Shenzhen Education Bureau Deputy Director Mr. Li ZHAO and SUSTech Vice President Chun LU.

Professor Ming LI reported on IIOE’s operations. After two months, the number of IIOE platform visits reached 5721, covering more than 120 countries and regions around the world. More than 50% were from mobile devices. During the COVID-19 outbreak, IIOE organized training on university management and teaching during the pandemic. IIOE has organized nine online training sessions for 1756 people from 233 institutions/agencies in 46 countries. Half of the training attendees came from the 11 IIOE co-initiating partner institutions.

When it came to the Case Sharing section, ICHEI’s Asian and African partner HEIs introduced their practices in a fine-grained way, including how IIOE complemented smart classrooms. Case studies from Ain Shams University (Egypt), the University of Colombo (Sri Lanka), Mongolian University of Science and Technology (Mongolia), and Ahmadu Bello University (Nigeria) explained how each institution was taking advantage of the smart classrooms in conjunction with IIOE.

Further studies came from the Royal University of Phnom Penh (Cambodia), the University of Djibouti (Djibouti), the University of Engineering and Technology Lahore (Pakistan), and the University of Nairobi (Kenya).

Partner enterprises and institutions such as Huawei, Weidong Cloud Education, CreateView Edu-Tech, Jiker, CIO Times, Shenzhen Polytechnic, and Shenzhen Institute of Information Technology all provided their insights.

Professor Lim Cher PING elaborated on the professional development and certification processes for its ICT teachers. He laid out the three teaching competencies that ICT teachers should acquire.

Mr. Tao ZHAN, Director of UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE), said ICT was increasingly significant in education against the backdrop of COVID-19 raging through the world. Mr. Libing WANG, Chief of Section for Educational Innovation and Skills Development, UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, also emphasized the importance of ICT and commended IIOE’s arduous efforts in this field.

In the webinar, UNESCO-ICHEI Senior Expert Mr. Jianhua ZHAO showed Guidance for Online Education during the COVID-19 pandemic to the guests. He explained each of the five Guidances and how they would assist different sets of stakeholders.

UNESCO Higher Education Chief of Section Mr. Peter Wells closed the webinar. He pointed out that the online teaching and learning environment is a prelude for the digital education transformation facing every segment of the education market.

As a flagship project of ICHEI, the International Institute of Online Education (IIOE) has served as a platform for teachers’ ICT capacity training in Asian and African partner institutions since it was launched on April 2. During the pandemic, teachers record MOOCs in smart classrooms and enhance their ICT capacity by learning courses in IIOE, thus alleviating the repercussions of school closures due to the pandemic. More countries are gradually attaching importance to online education so that IIOE will deliver tangible benefits to more developing countries. Their assistance will help them build a normalized online education and achieve their digital transformation.