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US online open courses popular in China

By JIA Xu (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-01-14 15:05

Young Chinese can now go online for free courses from top US universities on the Chinese portal website 163.com, Xinhua.net reported Friday.

The open courses range from social science to business management and most of the students are white-collar workers and college students who cannot afford to go overseas to study but still want to learn.

“The online courses are excellent, professors are humorous, topics are interesting and the delivery is fun,”said office worker Guo Lei, who got in the habit of watching the online courses during her lunch hour. She’s among many fans in China now, some setting up “free course groups”on social networking sites to share resources and discuss specific courses every day.

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The popularity of online learning also is leading to a boom for another industry, online script translation. A typical 45- to 70-minute course would take 70 hours of work, according to a group working together voluntarily to translate the lectures into Chinese subtitles.

The free online sharing program was initiated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2001 with the aim of benefiting people all over the world with opportunities to take world-class courses anytime, anyplace. The program then attracted other top US universities including Yale, Harvard, and Duke, with a shared vision to popularize it within 10 years. Every lesson is programmed in live, with an estimated cost of $20,000 to $40,000. The costs are covered by private donations from the American public.

Education experts say knowledge-sharing is novel and worth praise, because universities are providing free information online without concern for intellectual property rights.“In contrast, Chinese universities are still not in the stage of knowledge sharing,” said Professor Wang Zhuli from Sun Yat-Sen University.

In China, similar forms of free lectures are available on CCTV’s (Central China Television) Lecture Room, but the topics are limited to art and classic history. “Maybe Chinese educators should also consider working together to make top Chinese university courses available overseas,” Wang added.