On June 10, 2015, Curtis J.Bonk, the international famous expert in the field of emerging learning technologies and Professor of Department of Technical Education System of Indiana University lectured the 27th Lecture Hall of SUSTC by accepting invitation. In the lecture hall, Curtis J.Bonk introduced the huge changes happening to educational mode and learning behaviors along with the rapid development of educational technology. Li Ming, the Chairperson of University Council, Vice President Wu Chuanyue, Han Wei, the Vice Director of the Preparation Office and hundreds of teachers and students of SUSTC listened to this report. The training was hosted by the Vice President Wu Chuanyue.
As a pioneer of open learning, Professor Bonk has published more than 300 papers on the topic of online and blended learning, MOOC, collaborative technology, and synchronous and asynchronous computer conference, and conducted about 1,400 speeches and forums about online teaching and learning worldwide. Besides, Curtis J.Bonk has been listed in Who’s Who in educational technology area, and has been awarded the United States Distance Learning Association Award for Best Achievement, Distance Education and Teaching Innovation Award of the State of Indiana and Digital New Star Award of the Association for Information Technology at Indiana University. The title of the visit to SUSTC was Learning Is Changing: MOOCs, the Open World and Beyond
According to Professor Bonk, in the era of internet, learning had been completely changed, and anyone could learn in anywhere at any time from others. Open education drove the big changes of learning methods, which were mainly shown in 25 changes including: more mobile learning, more frequent use of videos and games, more collaborative learning, more explorations, more direct need of experts, more informal, autonomous driving of learners, more hands-on learning, more personalized learning, more dependence on learning communities, universal of online learning, ubiquitous learning, free access, globalization of learning, and popularization of learning. In the training, Professor Bonk also introduced the way to accelerate and support online learning and online teaching based on his own research on open learning.
Site Demonstration by Professor Curtis J.Bonk
Li Ming, the Chairman of University Council made a speech after Professor Bonk’s report. He expressed that the report was very inspiring and SUSTC aimed at changing traditional educational mode and course structure through educational informationization and network platform. In the future, SUSTC would actively develop online education and made it part of mainstream curriculum system and a determining factor of credit in order to further promote curriculum construction and improve teaching quality. In addition, our school would take measure to create conditions for MOOC, and encourage professors to develop MOOC resources in order to form excellent MOOC curriculum system; SUSTC would also build an open learning resources platform to integrate overseas and domestic high-quality online learning resources with the help of the information technology industries of Shenzhen and share it with the world. At last, Li hoped that the students and teachers of SUSTC could all join in the promotion of educational reform of SUSTC.
The interactive session enjoyed a warm atmosphere, and teachers and students were all eager to ask questions. Prior to the report, Li and Professor Bonk had a cordial talk with each other and exchanged views about online learning, blended learning, systematic education reform and incentive mechanism.
Training Site
