The final of the 2022 Hunan College Teaching Contest ended in Central South University on April, 23nd. HIE’s teacher Qiu Luo from the School of Computer Science and Electronics won the first prize of the science group, and Wang Bin from the School of Design Art received the same prize of the liberal arts group— the university’s best results gained in this competition. Such achievements are attributed to thoughtful arrangement of related departments and meticulous preparation of teachers involved, embodying HIErs’ motto spirit of “Making Steady Efforts, Dare to Be the First”.

The contest was jointly sponsored by Hunan Provincial Department of Education and Trade Union of Education, and co-hosted by Hunan Provincial Research Institute of Education and Central South University, which began in December, 2021. After selection by schools and preliminary contests in universities, a total of 150 teachers recommended by 52 general universities (including independent schools) across the province came into the semi-final. Contestants were ranked from high to low according to the results of the experts’ online comparison and assessment. Divided into groups of liberal arts (including ideology and politics), science (including medical science) and engineering, the contest qualified 31 teachers (teams) reaching the final.

It was held via “Tencent Meeting”, with technical assistance to contestants from the Network Information and Modern Educational Technology Center, and with mental and professional support by secondary colleges and the trade union of the university. Qiu Luo in this contest taught “Eigenvalue and Eigenvector of Square Matrix” in Linear Algebra. She designed creation-oriented, exploratory and immersive teaching activities, brought in interesting instances in class and put the tight logic of mathematical theories into the real world for validation, discrimination and application. The students were encouraged to discover problems with critical thinking, raise them with bravery and solve them by themselves with innovative thinking.  

While teaching “Depth of Field and Its Application” in Fundamentals of Modern Photography, Wang Bin enabled students to understand what is depth of field and how it is influenced by analyzing their photographic works. Through a mixture of IT-based teaching methods, he helped them obtain photographs with appropriate themes and established an educational system of aesthetics featuring beauty discovery, creation and communication from perspectives of what and how to photograph and how to display.

Over the past few years, our teachers have won a great deal of remarkable prizes in provincial and higher-level teaching contests, thanks to their spirit of moving forward with tenacity and striving for better, as well as close attention paid by leaders of the university and great support from experts and technical teams. Since the inception of HIE’s classroom teaching contest, experts of the Hunan Province and beyond have been invited for online and offline training with schemes and focuses many times. Their customized instruction, varying from interpretation of contest rules and criteria to approaches to content selection, teaching design, courseware making and teaching skill improvement, has largely improved the teachers’ capacity for the contest.

Imparting knowledge and educating people is the university’s core mission, and the key to enhancing personnel training ability and quality is the improvement of the teaching group. HIE will take contests as a platform to facilitate teaching and research and encourage teachers to devote themselves to its mission and shift their educational and teaching philosophy, so that the teaching-centered classroom can become more learning-centered, classroom revolution gain greater momentum, and undergraduate training boast higher quality.

(Checked by Wang Jiayi, Gong Qian)