Forum on residential colleges held in Xi'an

The 4th Forum on Education at Modern Residential Colleges was held at Xi'an Jiaotong University recently and shed light on the development of the residential college system.

This year's event, organized by the Residential College Alliance and hosted by the Xi'an university, brought together about 450 scholars, faculty members and students from more than 60 universities from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.

The alliance, formed in 2014 by residential colleges from eight universities, consists of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, XJTU, Taiwan's Chengchi University, Tsinghua University, Beihang University, Fudan University, East China Normal University and the University of Macau.

Zheng Qinghua, vice-president of XJNU, awarded plaques to five new alliance members at the forum — Shantou University, Southwest Jiaotong University, Dalian University of Technology, Southern University of Science and Technology and Asia University in Taiwan.

Five keynote speeches, 14 reports and a book collection of 39 papers were presented at the two-day forum.

With its first residential college built in 2006, XJNU has set up an integrated system which separates the academic and residential functions of the university.

Under the system, students are gathered into a community, regardless of their majors or grades, helping to build a self-managed learning process and interpersonal communication skills.

The residential colleges also collaborate with top international universities, including the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford and Yale University.