XXX: In 2003, nationally only 100 TLCP. These courses had a long history of development. We entered one course in 2003, very early. Our school also has a tradition of educational technology. Starting in 2003, the school began to focus more and more on creation of TLCP. 3 phases: construct, apply and use. We first make sure the courses are high quality before we promote them to the application, usually it’s courses with a long history of development. We also think about whether it’s strong enough to win in the provincial or national competition. Then we gradually improve the course. This is useful whether we apply or not. Then we let the courses be selected as university-level TLCP.

In this case, there is some money available, and some technical support to improve it further, so we can propose it for the provincial competition. If we are successful there, it tells us that the course has a certain level of quality. Then we might promote it to the national competition. Since it’s a competition, we have to have good communication between the teaching affairs office, the course team, and the educational technology office. The most important people are the teachers, they create all the material for the course. We coordinate between different levels. The ed tech center helps with websites and servers. 

One strength of our school’s approach is that we have a “pre-application” process. All 20 departments in the university can propose courses, and these courses all get a small amount of money for development. We work on developing these courses for 1-2 months, and after that, we create an expert committee composed of internal and external experts that begin evaluating the courses, mainly based on the internet material. Experts from other good universities in the region. 

The internal campus commitee discusses the strenghts and weaknesses of each course, especially where there is a difference in opinion with the external experts. The best courses are proposed as provincial and national courses. The teachers who have already had a course accepted as provincial or national TLCP also contribute to share their experiences of the process. 

The courses that are selected for this internal process are courses that are already impressive, many have gone through a period of ten years of development. But their online material has to be developed to reflect the class well, etc.

All courses have to be developed by teaching groups, composed of old, middle-aged and young teachers, should have post-doc, doctoral student, MA graduate. Graduates from different universities, with different honours.

Very different from for example Germany with their chair professors, here the old professor is responsible for teaching his/her replacements. IN bigger classes, can also divide the teaching responsibility with different sections, etc. 

We also listen in on classes. Students evaluate teaching materials. We evaluate teaching effectiveness, made up of several components: students evaluating the teaching materials, then we have a supervisory committee made up of very experienced and retired teachers, go listen to classes, then peer-review by teachers at the school, who listen on classes. The academic affairs office very seldom get directly involved in evaluation, we trust the results from experts. We just coordinate. We take all this into account when deciding which courses to be made university TLCP. 

We kept running these competitions until 2005, then we wanted to focus more on TLCP, so we stopped. We made a plan for how many TLCP we want to achieve. We want at least 30%. Currently we have 3000 courses, so 7-800 should be TLCP, this is a big focus for us. It already encompasses the requirements for excellent courses, and the requirements for TLCP are higher. 

Right now we are spending a lot of energy to try to put up a recording of every lecture from each course, not just a representative one, that takes a lot of time. Right now XXX TLCP.

Our goal is to get 500 courses between 2012 and 2015. To get to 30% of our courses, we have to get to 700. We are focusing on campus-based courses. A new goal: all obligatory major courses should be uni-level TLCP .

There is a limit to how many courses we can apply for each year, and there is also a limit to how much the university can afford. Currently about 40 courses per year. But the most important is quality, last year we aimed for 40, but ended up with only 20, because many courses didn’t reach the quality - that’s the most important. 

Each course that becomes province or national TLCP, we have to spend money - only part is covered by the funding. 

We control TLCP courses each year, to see if they have updated the material. All heads of departments participate, we want to see if the courses reflect the most up-to-date teaching situation, and the most updated findings in the field. All heads of depts sit around a table, open one course after another, check how much has been updated, if it hasn’t been updated enough, they have to explain why.

XXX: Also has a TLCP himself. Not in my name, I’m helped, younger person takes care of it, XXX, the course was designed by me, I wrote the book, I taught the course, then I trained him, now he teaches. I don’t need the recognition now that I am old, I let him do it. So I also have a TLCP.