# How and by whom are the Chinese Top Level Courses used?


*This thesis does not intend to evaluate the success of the Top Level
Courses Project, which would require a much more rigorous study design.
There are some Chinese studies that have looked at evaluating the
project, however they often don't separate clearly between which of the
[four possible purposes of
OER](http://reganmian.net/blog/2010/09/17/categorizing-oer-based-on-four-purposes/)
they are attempting to address. Below is a discussion about usage of the
resources, based both on some of the literature, as well as interviews
with professors and administrators.*

Although schools are encouraged to make university-level courses open,
or at least share them with other universities, there is no requirement
for them to be openly published. However all provincial or national Top
Level Courses Project have to be published openly for five years, and be
regularly updated during this time (Liu Zenghui 2009; MoE 2004). As an
example, Professor A2’s course had already been published online, but
with a password protection. After being selected as a Top Level Courses,
they removed the password, and also greatly improved the content, by
putting up recordings for every single lecture (required for the
national level designation), and also posting student evaluation
reports. In the process of creating the site, they often visited sites
from other disciplines to see how they did it, and received inspiration
from those examples. Professor A2 also recounted how they removed the
password to all their material, when they were selected as a Top Level
Course.

Most professors believe that the resources are primarily for colleagues
at other universities, although students can also use them. Professor A1
says that a lot of universities are using the material from their
course, and that it has helped make the course quite influential in the
whole country. She has personally been contacted by other professors who
tell her about their use of the resources, and some of these have
visited the university to learn more about the course. These are often
from lower ranked universities, whereas she believes that universities
at the same rank as her own might be more interested at looking abroad
for course inspiration, something she has also done in her own work.

Professor B2’s course has also been very influential. It is one of only
three or four similar courses available as Top Level Courses, yet this
topic is taught in more than a hundred universities. He believes his
course has had a large impact in raising the standard, and influencing
the design of similar courses at many universities in China.

The academic affairs office at Professor B1’s university has said that
the use rates of her course are very high. Her course is offered at all
universities, so many professors consult her resources, and contact her
for more information when they want to develop their own courses.
Professor B2’s course is also used by many teachers, and lately he has
noticed that new courses that apply for the Top Level Courses
designation use some of their thinking, even going so far as to copy
certain expressions whole-sale from their course. Some of the teachers
contacted him, and told him that they were basing part of their course
on his materials, but others did not. In addition to this, the course is
also popular among students who are going for the graduate school exam
in his field, and want to understand the situation in the field better.

Qin (2008) discusses how courses are “marketed”, and divides the
channels into three. First, the Ministry of Education maintains websites
(such as Jingpinke.com, see below), and distributes information to
universities and other organizations. Secondly, the universities and
individual professors themselves often publish their courses in
newspapers, magazines, at meetings and in reports to other universities
and colleges. Some universities have also published books listing all
the Top Level Courses they have produced, with details from the
application process. Finally, some voluntary associations, such as China
Open Resources for Education, have organized information about Top Level
Courses and created link and resource pages.

There is not much in the literature about how students and teachers are
using the Top Level Courses. Beijing City used external evaluators to
conduct an in-depth study of the city-wide Top Level Courses Project in
2005, but most of the feedback was focused on how the materials were
used in the class for which it was created – in other words, the course
website functioned more as a generic learning management system.

However, data also shows that while most students accessed material
relevant to their current school work, a number of high school students
used the material to check out interesting college courses, and some
students accessed material purely related to their interests. Teachers
also used the material to prepare for classes (Ding et al. 2005).

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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.

-   [Download the canonical PDF
  version](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses/Haklev_Stian_201009_MA_thesis.pdf)
-   [Central page collecting all blog posts, many different download
  formats, and supplementary
  material](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses)

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