Chinese OpenCourseWare - a Case Study of a Large State-Sponsored Program

Session Title: Chinese OpenCourseWare - a Case Study of a Large State-Sponsored Program

Presenters: Stian Håklev, M.A. Candidate, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

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Time & Date: 11:15 A.M. - 12:00 A.M., Thursday, August 13, 2009

Location: Rm. C100

Session Description: The idea of OpenCourseWare, initially conceived at MIT, has spread to countries and institutions around the world. Although inspired by the MIT model, the model has often been modified to suit different national and institutional contexts. It is important for us to understand how this adoption and change happens, and to study how different models work in practice, both in order to increase the international adaptation of OCW, but also to learn from the many experiments and implementations that exist.

The adaption of OpenCourseWare in China has been frequently mentioned, but little studied by outside scholars. It is one of the most aggressive adopters of the OCW idea; not only is China Open Resources for Education (CORE) coordinating efforts to translate MIT OCW into Chinese, but the Chinese Ministry of Education has since 2003 been operating a national OCW program called China Quality OpenCourseWare. Chinese universities submit proposals, and can receive between $7,300 and $14,600 per course that is made freely available online. By 2009, there are over 10,000 courses available online, many of these with extensive resources, and video recordings.

To understand how OCW has been adapted in China, we need to locate it within the context of the massification of higher education, going from 7% of the relevant cohort attending higher education in 1997, to around 20% ten years later. Initial literature review reveals that in China, OCW is not seen as a tool to increase access to education, but to improve the quality of undergraduate teaching. In fact, from 2007, the China Quality OpenCourseWare program has been subsumed under a larger program called “The Quality Project”.

This presentation will report from a field study conducted in the summer of 2009. I plan to visit three universities that are involved in OpenCourseWare production: one national top-level university, one mid-level university, and one that has collaborated directly with MIT in the past. I will interview academic leadership to get the “institutional view”, as well as several professors who are involved in the production of OCW. I also hope to get an interview with an official at the Ministry of Education. Add to this an extensive literature review, and visits with several of the academics in China that research OpenCourseWare and open education, and it is hoped that the study will produce a comprehensive view of how the Chinese OCW program operates, and how it is viewed by the different constituents.

I will also look into different meanings of “open” as perceived by Chinese researchers and OCW-producers, to understand how well the deep ideas behind OpenCourseWare transfer to different cultures and institutional settings. I am looking forward to sharing my findings with the conference participants, and hope that this will contribute to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the Chinese efforts, and to the international character of the movement. This is particularly relevant in conceptualizing our way going forward.