China’s Ministry of Education recently issued a document encouraging more colleges and universities to run online open courses. The document, titled “Opinions on Strengthening the Application and Management of Online Open Course for Higher Education”, announces plans to name 1,000 national-level excellent open courses by 2017, and to award this status to 3,000 courses by 2020.

The document also suggests introducing more foreign courses, especially those covering topics related to the natural sciences, engineering and technology. According to the document, MoE urges innovation in credit management, encouraging Chinese universities to formulate standards for online courses and to integrate them into their academic credit systems for students. It also pushes for cooperation between universities and the Open University of China’s teaching platform, aiming at providing quality products for life-long education.

Analysis by Liu Xiaoxiao, Education Service Manager and Kevin Prest, Senior Analyst:

MOOCs have brought new opportunities and challenges in higher education, and China’s MoE has actively reacted to this global wave. The Opinion’s encouragement of foreign courses and teaching sources is a positive sign for UK institutions, while the importance the government places on these courses emphasises that this will be a major trend in the future of Chinese higher education.

Online education may have great potential in China. According to reports of China Daily, the online education market in China was valued by iResearch Group at 83.97 billion yuan ($13.6 billion) in 2013, expecting increasing number of learners in China to grow from 67.2 million in 2013 to 120 million in 2017.

Source: http://www.moe.edu.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s5987/201504/18...