# Open Education - lecture in Chinese at South China Normal University


This summer, I am spending four months in China, and much of the time
will be taken up with my research project (for my MA) on Chinese
"OpenCourseWare" (I am gradually realizing that this is not an apt
English translation of their program, but I need time to come up with a
better one). In addition to my specific research plan, which includes
interviewing people at three different universities, and someone at the
Ministry of Education, I am very interested in meeting up with people
knowledgeable about this area, and doing research on it.

Coming up from Hong Kong to Beijing, I spent a few days at [South China
Normal University](http://former.scnu.edu.cn/eweb/), where my advisor in
Toronto had introduced me to some of his colleagues. They have a very
strong group there in the department for educational technology, and a
centre whose name I really love: [Future Education Research
Centre](http://www.ferc.net) (in Chinese). Not only were they some of
the first to develop "OpenCourseWare" in China, but they also hold
several research grants to research Chinese OpenCourseWare, one that
compares it to OER in other countries, and one that looks at how to
promote sustainability and reuse of OER.

In addition, the centre meets every Thursday night for a seminar, and
that week, I was invited to give a presentation about my own research,
and some of my initial thoughts about the Chinese OCW situation. This
was my first time to give a formal presentation in Chinese, which was
both exciting and daunting. I was very happy about the opportunity,
because it is a skill I wish to develop: One of my future dreams is to
be able to teach in China - in Chinese. I know I'm not there yet, but
practice makes master.

I used a lot of the material from [the presentation I gave at
OISE](/blog/2009/03/16/open-education-around-the-world-presentation-at-oise/)
with Jim Slotta, so the [links
page](/blog/2009/03/12/links-from-the-talk-open-education-around-the-world/)
for that talk would be useful for this talk as well.

The [slides for the
talk](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/presentation-at-south-china-normal-university-16-april-2009)are
on Slideshare, you might want to watch them while listening, since it's
a very visual talk - sorry they are not synchronized. Also, some of the
first few minutes of the video is missing, and the image has a lot of
artifacts at first, but that clears up. Thank you very much to Jia
Yimin, Zhao Jianhua, Jiao Jianli for inviting me, and for all the other
professors and students for engaging with me in such a great way. And
thank you for capturing the talk on video, and sharing the file with me!

In case the embeds don't work, here are direct links to [part
1](http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/o7HKcgp8mmU/) and [part
2](http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/XSUUcEzGybY/).

Part I:

Part II:

One of the things I say towards the end, is that I think there is an
unprecedented opportunity for the educational research community in
China to make a contribution both nationally, and internationally, when
it comes to open education research. I have in the past called for [the
use of more theory when researching
OER](http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/11/10/theoretical-frameworks-for-researching-oer/),
and part of the reason why that doesn't happen, is that many who are
attending open education conferences in North America are not from
schools of education, or have backgrounds in relevant fields. They are
doing incredibly important work, and creating great innovations, but I
keep wishing that more people within the field of education would begin
studying this area (which is also why I this year presented on OER at
[CIES](http://reganmian.net/blog/2009/01/25/one-size-does-not-fit-all-a-case-study-of-the-spread-of-opencourseware-to-india-china-and-japan/),
and at the [OISE Dean's
Conference](http://reganmian.net/blog/2009/03/16/open-education-panel-at-deans-graduate-conference/)).

However, in China there is a huge amount of research on this happening
at schools of education around the country. There are entire research
centers focusing on Chinese OpenCourseWare, there's a journal called
[Open
Education](http://www.shtvu.edu.cn/research/kaifang/main/main2.asp) (in
Chinese). In addition, China has a very strong background in distance
education, with it's [massive TV and Radio University
system](http://www.crtvu.edu.cn/English_crtvu/index_en.html). That is
not to say that all the research that is currently published is
excellent - but I believe the potential is there. I hope more Chinese
will reach out, translate their articles into English, write English
blogs... but I also hope that the international community respect and
support that. Provide travel grants for Chinese researchers to go to
conferences, show an interest in their research and findings, look at
the massive amount of OER available in Chinese, and consider translating
some of this to English and use it with their own students, etc.

Stian