Recently, the General Office of the Ministry of Education announced the list of the first batch of Virtual Teaching and Research Groups (VTARGs), among which Tongji University has nine, including three VTARGs of the course (cluster) teaching category, five VTARGs of the discipline construction category, and one VTARG of the teaching and research reform category. The number of VTARGs ranks sixth among universities in China and first in Shanghai.
The nine VTARGs of Tongji University
The construction of VTARGs is an important exploration in developing new teaching units in the information age. The Ministry of Education decided to do the pilot construction of VTARGs to implement the policies as laid out in the "Opinions of the Ministry of Education on Accelerating the Construction of High-level Undergraduate Education and Improve the Ability of Talent Cultivation" and the "Opinions of the Ministry of Education on Deepening the Reform of Undergraduate Education and Teaching to Improve the Quality of Talent Cultivation", and to promote the construction of new teaching units. The construction of the VTARGs takes moral education and cultivation of people as the fundamental task, with the improvement of talent training ability in the core. It aims at exploring the construction of new teaching units, creating teachers' teaching development communities and culture, and guiding teachers to concentrate on teaching, love teaching and teaching research, and provide strong support for the high-quality development of higher education by taking advantage of the information technology. The VTARGs are further classified into categories of course (cluster) teaching, discipline construction, teaching and research reform, special teaching and research among others.
The pilot construction of the VTARGs mainly involve four tasks. The first task is to innovate the teaching and research form by making full use of the information technology to explore a teacher teaching and research approach that breaks through the limits of time and space, and is efficient, convenient, and available online and offline. New ideas, new methods, and new paradigms for the construction and management of teaching units are expected to result from the construction. The second task is to strengthen teaching research by encouraging teachers to enhance research and to explore further development in curriculum design, teaching content, teaching methods, and teaching evaluation. The third one is to build high-quality resources jointly through collaboration among VTARGs such as talent training programs, syllabuses, knowledge maps, teaching videos, electronic courseware, practice questions, teaching cases, experimental projects, practical training projects, and data sets to form a high-quality shared teaching resource library. The fourth one is to carry out teacher training by conducting normalized teacher training, advocating the leading role of national teaching teams, famous teaching teachers, and first-class courses, promoting mature and effective talent training models and curriculum implementation plans, and optimizing the career development of front-line teachers.
According to the Freshmen College, the University will take the construction of VTARGs as an opportunity to focus on course (group) teaching, discipline development, and teaching and research reform, to promote the construction of new teaching units, to innovate teaching and research forms, to strengthen teaching research, and to co-build high-quality resources. Teacher training will be offered to form high-level teaching teams, to cultivate teaching research and practical results, to strengthen the quality teaching culture, to improve teachers' teaching ability, to improve the quality of talent training, and to build a high-quality education system.
https://news.tongji.edu.cn/info/1002/80084.htm
