# Course selection criteria for the Chinese Top Level Courses


The initial policy defined a quality course as being a model course with
“first-class teaching teams, first-class teaching content, first-class
teaching methods, first-class course materials, first class teaching and
first-class teaching management” (MoE 2003). These “six first-classes”
are mentioned in almost all literature on the project, and were also
repeated by most of my interview participants.

The specific aspects listed in the first policy paper specified that the
courses should be taught by top teachers, who have long experience and
influence in their fields. This was partially to address the desire,
also expressed in the 2001 policy paper, to attract full professors at
top universities into spending time teaching core undergraduate courses.
The content of the course should be up-to-date and reflect the cutting
edge of the academic field. The course should be taught with advanced
and innovative teaching methods. Teaching materials should either be
award-winning nationally approved materials, materials developed by the
teachers themselves, or material from abroad. More experiential and
practical learning was encouraged, for example experiments and
internships. Finally, the university was to set up effective incentive
and evaluation mechanisms for rewarding participation in the project,
and effectively selecting and improving appropriate courses.

In 2004, a more detailed policy note appeared, which provided further
information about the requirements for courses. Both regular
undergraduate courses, and courses from vocational schools, that had
already been taught for at least three years, were accepted. The head of
the teaching team should be a full professor. To evaluate that person’s
teaching capability, a minimum of one 50 minute video recording had to
be made available on the website, but universities were encouraged to
put up recordings of all lectures. In addition, the syllabus, lesson
plans, exercises, laboratory guides, and reference material also had to
be made available online (MoE 2004).

In the previous chapter, a number of course evaluation systems that
preceded the Top Level Courses project were discussed. One of these, at
Tsinghua University, actually gave its name to the Top Level Courses
project (Han Xibin and Ju Feng, personal communication). According to
Mr. B0, most of the categories listed, such as teaching teams, teaching
contents, teaching methods, teaching principles, and the academic level
of teachers, were similar to earlier evaluation methods. The most
important innovation was the focus on educational technology, ie.
developing internet resources and then sharing them openly.

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The quotes in this text is from the MA Thesis "The Chinese National Top
Level Courses Project: Using Open Educational Resources to Promote
Quality in Undergraduate Teaching" by Stian Håklev, University of
Toronto 2010.

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