National-level MOOCs

by Li Zhuoxi

MOOC （Massive Open Online Course） is a newly emerging online course development model. Lately， the Ministry of Education of China selected 490“National-level MOOC” courses， among which about 70 percent are sponsored and provided by leading universities in China. Courses are mainly in video form， each ranging from a few minutes to over a dozen minutes in length. After watching part of the video， students are required to answer some questions before they can continue. Students can also hold discussions online. Those MOOC courses provide assignments， deadlines and final exams， which are scored by an automated computer system. For some courses， students are granted a certificate if they pass all exams.

According to Wu Yan， director of the higher education department of the Ministry of Education， Chinas volume of MOOC courses ranks first in the world. Currently， over 460 universities have provided and uploaded more than 3，200 MOOC courses， of which 200 courses are also available on overseas MOOC platforms.

Future goals for MOOC development in China include two priorities： improve quality and promote fairness， which are also the two fundamental pillars for improving the quality of higher education in China and building the country into a leading power of higher education. By 2020， the Ministry of Education of China will carefully select 3，000 national-level outstanding online courses and 7，000 outstanding offline courses， a total of 10，000 national-level topnotch courses.？