With the witness of Mr. Peng Youdong, Deputy Administrator of the State Administration of Forestry and Grassland, China, an agreement signing ceremony for the APFNet funded project Innovative Sustainable Forest Management Education in the Asia Pacific Region (Phase II) was held at the 5th Meeting of the Asia Pacific Forestry Education Coordination Mechanism (APFECM) in Beijing on March 28, 2018. Over 200 representatives from 60 universities attended the conference.

Dr. Lu expressed that the Mechanism belong to universities, and he hopes that the Mechanism could offer opportunities for collaborative partnerships among its members to jointly address educational challenges now and in the future.

The project (Phase II) will be led by the University of British Columbia (UBC) in collaboration with other 5 international representative universities. As Professor John Inners, UBC’s dean of the Faculty of Forestry said a suite of 6 new courses will be developed, with further emphasis on tropical forests and the inclusion of new pedagogical approaches and high educational technologies in the process.

These courses, adding a few from the phase I, will offer a wide range of courses portfolio accredited online master program. It is a great project because it is not a charity, but an investment in the future.

The courses developed in Phase I of the project has attracted 3000+ global users and 35,000 viewers from 91economies, and received 2016 Award of Excellence and Innovation in the Integration of Technology in Educational Practices/Collaboration.