November 25, six African experts and scholars on Distance Education from South Africa, Swaziland, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria came to our university for research and exchanges. The exchange activity is not only a concrete implementation to the proposal of enhancing the communication and cooperation of education between Africa and China, since our president Mr. Jiang Hong has attended the UNESCO – China – Africa three party coordination meeting, but also part of the Visiting Scholars Project of Shanghai Open University.

Our Vice President, Gu Xiaomin, attended the welcome ceremony, and made a speech. During her speech, she wished to enhance the mutual understanding of distance education between African countries and Shanghai Open University, as to lay a good foundation for jointly exploring a new mode of distance education, strengthening the monitoring and quality assurance, and promoting the inner-school cooperation on distance education between China and African countries.

During the following two weeks of research and studies, meetings will be arranged between the six visiting scholars and related academic departments, administrative departments, as well as staff from branch schools and information technology center, in order to have a deep understanding of the education concept and specialty of Shanghai Open University. In addition, the visiting scholars will also make presentations on the practice, experience and development trends of distance education in their own countries through panel discussions and symposia.