In the afternoon of 23rd April, the Undergraduate Teaching Innovation Series Forum was held by the Teaching Affairs Department and School of Materials Science and Engineering (SMSE) in the lecture hall of Shaw Science Building. We were honored to invite Professor Dongsheng Yu, a well-known expert in higher engineering education, from Education Science Research Institute at Huazhong University of Science and Technology to give a report on New Engineering Discipline and Construction on First-class Undergraduate Education. The forum was attended by more than 150 teachers and hosted by Miaoxian Wu, the Standing Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of SMSE.

The Undergraduate Teaching Innovation Series Forum

Standing Deputy Secretary Miaoxian Wu hosted the forum

Professor Yu started with the question “What’s the academic problem of teaching”. He then talked about discovering knowledge and the essence of knowledge through systematic study of teaching and learning process, and students’ learning process. Then he turned the abstract theory into concrete and situational understanding that could help explore the meaning of teaching and promote teaching. He explained cases of outstanding undergraduate education and outstanding teaching in detail, and introduced two key factors of outstanding undergraduate education: students’ personal effort, especially whether he or she could fit into the academic and living environment in universities; and the academic environment,  atmosphere for enhancing personal relationships and extracurricular activities, and measures to encourage students to fit in better provided by universities. He also elaborated on the four elements of research on teaching. That is, 1. finding problems, seeking answers, carrying out research and obtaining solutions and plans; 2. forming new theories; 3. applying them to teaching; 4. improving the quality and level of teaching.

Professor Dongsheng Yu

With his rich experience in higher education research, Professor Yu explained profound theoies in simple language. His talk guided a way of outstanding teaching with theoretical height, depth and width for front-line teachers in SMSE and provided food for thought for the construction of new engineering discipline and outstanding undergraduate education in our school.

After the forum, Professor Suhong Yin, Vice Dean of SMSE, reported on the undergraduate teaching quality of SMSE in 2018. She detailed some basic situation, such as standardization of teaching management, teaching input, specialty construction, curriculum construction, student enrollment, students’ innovation and entrepreneurship,and situation of graduates.

Professor Suhong Yin reported on undergraduate teaching quality

In the end, Professor Qinyuan Zhang, Secretary of the Party Committee of SMSE gave a talk. He emphasized that teachers should strengthen the construction of teachers’ morality and teaching styles and be serious about teaching discipline. They should also concern and care more about students, put teaching as well as morality educaiton into practice and create a positive teaching and learning environment.

Professor Qinyuan Zhang gave a talk

(Text/Li Yang, Photograph/Xiaofeng Zeng, Editing/ Xiaofeng Zeng)