# Global Concept, Local Practices: State of the Research on OCW in Chinese


I am giving a few different presentations this year. The first one is at
the [OpenCourseWare
Consortium](http://ocwconsortium.org/)/[Connexions](http://cnx.org)
[conference](http://cnxconference.rice.edu/) in Houston in the first
week of February. The presentation is based on the preliminary research
I am doing for my MA thesis, which will be on open educational resources
in China. In China, there are roughly two categories of OERs - one is
the Chinese translations of MIT and other foreign universities' OCW
materials - mostly facilitated by
[CORE](http://www.core.org.cn/core/default.aspx) and
[OOPS](http://myoops.org/). In addition, the Chinese Ministry of
Education is funding a large-scale production of Chinese OER (many
thousand courses produced and available already), called China Quality
OCW (Chinese: 精品课程).

This is a huge project involving 650 different universities, and there
has also been a lot written and researched around this - thousands of
peer-reviewed papers. It's very difficult as an outsider to make any
sense of this research quickly, so I am getting research help from a
Chinese professor in distance education. The presentation will include
an introduction to the Chinese OER project (which most people in North
America are not very familiar with), and a demonstration of some of the
resources, as well as a presentation of some of the research on OER
going on in China. Here's the abstract that was accepted for a 45 minute
session:

**Global Concept, Local Practices: State of the Research on OCW in
Chinese**

*Since the MIT OCW program was started in 2002, the OCW movement and
idea have spread to many different countries and linguistic contexts.
Wonderful innovation, production and research is happening in different
countries, and often published in different languages. For the OCW and
OER movements to progress, it is imperative that we be able to learn
from each other, and bridge these linguistic barriers.*

*China has been 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 (精品课程). Chinese universities submit
proposals, and can receive between \$7,300 and \$14,600 per course that
is made freely available online. By 2007, there were already over 1,100
courses available online, many of these with extensive resources, and
video recordings.*

*In addition to this large-scale production OCW, the Chinese scholarly
community has also been prolific in researching and publishing about the
program. The China Academic Journals database, which provides the full
text of over 7,000 Chinese scholarly articles, lists 2,137 articles with
the term 精品课程 (China Quality OCW), of which 421 were published in
2008. In numbers, this is roughly equivalent to all the scholarly
publication that mention OCW in English and other Latin languages in
total - however, the story becomes even more impressive when initial
sampling shows that most of the Chinese articles listed mention OCW in
their title, and have OCW as their main topic, whereas many of the
English language publications are writing about broader issues, and only
refer to OCW in passing.*

*I am currently conducting a research project on this wealth of
literature. Initially I will try to provide a broad grouping of the
Chinese articles on OCW, provide statistics on number of articles in
each group (for example: articles that describe the process of producing
individual OCW courses, articles that present surveys on student usage,
etc), and in what kind of journals these articles appear. My ultimate
objective is not only to gain a good understanding of the state of
research around the Chinese Quality OCW program, but also identify
specific journal articles that provide theoretical models,
methodological approaches or accounts of experiences that are very
relevant and useful to the North-American research on OER and OCW.*

*In my presentation, I will give a brief overview of the history and
current state of China Quality OpenCourseWare, how it is funded,
produced, and used, and also how it interacts with the Chinese
translations of for example MIT OCW. I will give an overview over the
"state of research", both in terms of poignant research questions,
methodologies and also relevant findings, from the Chinese context. I
will also argue for a more integrated research roadmap for OCWs in North
America, that actively engages with researchers and the literature from
around the world.*

Very ambitious, and my research is still in its early stages, but I
think it will still be interesting, and invite people at the conference
to attend.I might try to record it as well.

Stian

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