# New talk in Chinese: Understanding the meaning of open education, expanding the definition of OER


I was kindly invited by Professor Chang to give a presentation to the
department of education at [Minzu University of
China](http://eng.muc.edu.cn/) (formerly called Central University of
Nationalities). I never like to give the same talk twice, so although I
reused some of the materials from [my talk at South China
Normal](http://reganmian.net/blog/2009/04/27/open-education-lecture-in-chinese-at-south-china-normal-university/),
I redesigned the talk quite a bit. I decided to focus more on Open
Access, since I think it's so important in China, and I also introduced
[Ivan Illich](http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan%20Illich) and deschooling
society. In a country that is obsessed by formal education, and is
currently undergoing probably the most rapid expansion of higher
education that the world has ever seen, this might be seen as quite
subversive.

However, I was not on my pulpit preaching, rather I think his texts give
us a lot of food for thought. And the fact that it was written in the
1970's reinforces my belief that the really difficult part with online
learning - especially collaborative - is the "software", ie the social
practices and structures, rather than the "hardware", ie. the
technology.

I got a fair number of good questions from the students after the talk.
The talk went on for a bit over an hour, and we spent maybe an hour more
discussing, after a small break. It's great to have that much time
available to really probe something in-depth.

In addition to Illich (whose books [are available in
full-text](http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich.html), but sadly not
[the Chinese translation](http://www.douban.com/subject/1997483/)), I've
been reading up on different sociological theories on the value of
schooling lately for a paper I was co-authoring, and found much that is
extremely relevant to open education (especially in its more radical
intonations). I need to spend more time thinking through this later, and
maybe it could be come a paper in itself.

The entire talk (but not the subsequent discussion) is available below
in audio, synced with slides. You can also directly download the audio
([mp3](http://www.archive.org/download/UnderstandingTheMeaningOfOpenEducation-ExpandingTheDefinitionOfOer/MindaJiangzuo050509.mp3),
[ogg](http://www.archive.org/download/UnderstandingTheMeaningOfOpenEducation-ExpandingTheDefinitionOfOer/MindaJiangzuo050509.ogg)).

[理解开放教育的意义
突破教育资源的限定](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/ss-1383674?type=presentation "理解开放教育的意义 突破教育资源的限定")

View more [Microsoft Word documents](http://www.slideshare.net/) from
[houshuang](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang).

Stian