# Commercial ecosystem around Chinese Top Level Courses


Over the years since the Top Level Courses Project was launched in 2003,
an ecosystem of services and providers has grown up around it. The
Ministry of Education organizes a number of conferences and training
sessions, as do provincial boards of education. As described in the case
studies, universities themselves will organize internal training, both
bringing experienced course developers together with teams that are
beginning to develop Top Level Courses, and also inviting external
experts, and promoting exchange between different universities.

China Open Resources for Education, a non-profit organization that will
be described more fully in the next chapter, has held a number of
national conferences around Open Educational Resources and the
development of Top Level Courses. There are also a number of commercial
actors in this space, both providing web development and hosting
services, creating Content Management Systems that are tailored
specifically to Top Level Courses, and providing training for teachers
in developing Top Level Courses.

For example, given that most Top Level Courses involve capturing
lectures, [AVA
Electronics](http://www.ava.com.cn/cn/ProductInfo.asp?id=411) sells an
integrated solution that can coordinate recording from several
videocameras, capturing the presentation slides, and automatically
publish this in an acceptable format. Similar lecture-capturing
platforms are well-known in North America, but the interesting part is
that this is being marketed as a “Automated Top Level Courses Recording
System” (AVA 2010).

[![](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/AVA1.png "AVA1")](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/AVA1.png)

And when it comes to specialized software, there are many options. For
example, [Hubei Huaqin Education Software
Company](http://www.51tek.com/category-476.html), which markets a large
number of specialized platforms for purposes such as “government news
portal”, “membership management portal” and “online learning portal”,
has a specialized portal software for applying for and promoting Top
Level Courses. They also promote a portal for coordinating the work of
evaluating Top Level Courses according to the changing requirements each
year (Huaqin 2010). Tsinghua University has also developed a portal for
Top Level Courses, which is widely used (Han Xibin, personal
communication).

[![](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Huaqin.png "Huaqin")](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Huaqin.png)

There is even [Skyclass](http://www.skyclass.cn/visual.htm)’ “3D Top
Level Courses portal”. On their website they warn that traditional
course websites often make evaluators tired, having to flip back and
forth between materials, whereas the 3D portal will encourage the use of
the right side of the brain, and will leave a deep impression on course
evaluators (Skyclass 2010a).

[![](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/skyclass.png "skyclass")](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/skyclass.png)

There are also many companies that offer to custom-build Top Level
Course portals. One of these, a company called [Five-Pointed Star
Technology](http://www.wjxit.com/jpkc.asp), proudly presents screenshots
and links of already built courses that were successful in gaining the
Top Level Courses designation on their homepage (Five-Pointed Star
2010).

[![](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/5star.png "5star")](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/5star.png)

As for training, the Higher Education Institutions Teacher Online
Training Center, a part of the Higher Education Press, offers more than
30 different fee-based courses on how to develop Top Level Courses. The
courses last 2-3 days, and are held at various locations around the
country, with some addressing general aspects of the development
process, but most being discipline-specific (Jiaoshi wangluo peixun
2010). Skyclass (2010b) also offers a number of courses, primarily
structured around their software offering, but also aiming to introduce
the new Top Level Courses evaluation criteria.

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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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