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Domestic open learning debuts in China

By Zheng Jinran (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-04-08 17:20

The first batch of open courses from Chinese universities has made their debuts on the Internet since launching in April when foreign open classes have been popular in China, China Youth Daily reported on April 7.

Overseas open classes from some famous universities, such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Oxford subtitled by volunteers have been well received in China. Inspired by this, domestic universities like Fudan University in Shanghai, have started to make their lectures and courses available to the public on some platforms such as v.163.com/open.

A series of lectures about thoughts in ancient China have been made available now. These lectures are held by Professor Wang Fansen, a famous history scholar.

Fudan holds more than 2,000 lectures annually. "In the past five years, we have recorded more than 500 lectures. Some of them will be gradually open to the public in the future." Fang Ming, vice minister of Publicity Department said.

The domestic open courses have drawn great attention. Netizens have also provided their suggestions on that program. One said "I hope experts could make the tough knowledge easy for readers to understand. Our courses should have their own features so as to compete with those foreign ones."

China has provided many lessons from high schools for the public for a number of years, but the influence was very limited since the links led to the wrong pages or many places did not have access to the Internet. Xiong Bingqi, vice dean of 21 Century Education Research Institute said, "Though those online lectures have been very popular in China, domestic open courses will have a long way to go to impact society."