Page 110 - Open and Distance Education In Asia : Good Practice From AAOU Members

90 OPEN AND DISTANCE EDUCATON IN ASIA
Good Practices from AAOU Members

MOOCs AND OTHER OPEN EDUCATION learning, other educational institutions
PRACTICES also joined the construction of Chinese-
Thanks to the joint efforts of the institutions language platforms. For example, the Higher
of higher learning, governments, and other Education Press joined hands with NetEase
institutions in recent years, the construction and launched MOOC of Chinese Universities
of MOOCs in China has been successful. (www.icourse163.org), and Peking University
This section reviews the status of MOOC developed the Chinese Language MOOC
development in China, revealing the existing (www.chinesemooc.org) platform in
problems facing MOOC construction in cooperation with Alibaba. Furthermore, the
China in order to give a direction for future involvement of technology enterprises has
improvement. strengthened the technical functionalities
of these platforms, ensuring that MOOC
MOOC Platform Construction platforms can better serve learners.
The development of MOOCs in China falls
into the two categories of international MOOC Resource Construction
cooperation and localized construction. In The construction of localized platforms
the early stages, the development of MOOCs has made it possible for a number of
was dominated by cooperation of top China Chinese universities to take part in MOOC
universities with renowned international construction. MOOCs are no longer a select
platforms. For example, Tsinghua University, project of some top universities; they have
the University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong developed into an education movement
University of Science and Technology signed with a common commitment from various
a cooperation agreement with edX; Fudan types of institutions of higher learning. This
University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has also provided favorable conditions for
and the Chinese University of Hong Kong MOOCs to grow in number and diversify
joined Coursera; and Peking University in terms of content. According to statistics
and Hong Kong University of Science and from the Ministry of Education, by the end of
Technology established cooperation with edX 2017, domestic institutions of higher learning
and Coursera (Yuan & Liu, 2014). However, and related institutions had established more
due to language and culture limitations, open than 10 MOOC platforms. 3,200 courses from
courses from international platforms were around 460 institutions of higher learning
unable to adequately serve Chinese learners. had been pushed online, and 55 million
university students and learners from across
Against this background, the development society had chosen to study the courses (Chai
of MOOCs in China entered a stage & Jiao, 2018). As of October 2021, there
of localization. For instance, Tsinghua were as many as 47,500 online courses with
University launched the Classroom Online 364 million registered users, the number
(www.xuetangx.com) platform. This was of people who chose to learn the courses
followed by CNMOOC by Shanghai Jiao Tong had surpassed 755 million, and 290 million
University. In addition to institutions of higher students had obtained MOOC credits (Wu,
2021).

The Open University of China (OUC)