On November 30, the official website of the Ministry of Education issued the “Notice on the Announcement of the Results of the First Batch of National First-class Undergraduate Courses”, recognizing 5,118 courses as the first batch of national first-class undergraduate courses. A total of 75 courses of WHU were listed, ranking the fourth in number nationwide. Among these, 43 are online courses, nine are virtual simulation and experiment teaching courses, 18 are offline courses, and five are online-offline integrated courses.
The first batch of national first-class undergraduate courses was selected through procedures like online selection, offline selection and annoucement, which is conducted by the Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education. The recognized courses must adhere to the standard of high level, innovation, and the concept of student-centered, result-oriented and everlasting improvement. In addition, they are supposed to drive more schools and teachers to get involved in the reform of education and teaching. The Ministry of Education will track, supervise and manage the development of listed courses by means of evaluation and regular inspection, so as to continuously promote the in-depth development from "learning revolution" to "quality revolution", thus boosting the gradual popularization of China's education to a new level.
The curriculum is the core element of talent training, because the quality of the curriculum directly determines the quality of talent training. WHU has been conscientiously practicing General Secretary Xi Jinping's important exposition on education and the spirit of the national education conference, implementing the requirements of the new National Undergraduate Education Conference for the New Era, and deepening reform of education and teaching through courses setting. WHU has carried out the construction of "gold standard courses" in an all-round way, set up a new concept of curriculum construction, facilitated innovation of curriculum reform, implemented scientific curriculum evaluation and strict management, formulated strict rules (for example, professors and high-level talents must get involved in teaching), consolidated primary teaching organizations, improved teachers' teaching ability, and the incentive mechanism of quality-oriented curriculum construction, so as to develop diversified teaching contents and the curriculum system.
WHU will continue to take the "Double First-Class" strategy, which means world-class universities and world-class disciplines, as an opportunity. Guided by the principle of moral education, WHU regards the students’ development as our priority and the improvement of the quality of talent training as the core, so as to make the curriculum better, teachers stronger, students busier, management more strict, and the impact greater. With these efforts, WHU will build a higher level of talent training system and comprehensively improve the quality of our courses.
It is reported that among 5,118 national first-class undergraduate courses, there are 1,559 courses promoting the deep integration of information technology and education and teaching, especially the national excellent online open courses and national virtual simulation experiment teaching projects in 2017 and 2018 that have made significant contributions during the massive online teaching practice during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Written by: Qiu Chao
Rewritten by: Chen Muying
