# Critiques of the Chinese Top Level Courses Project in the Chinese literature


Although most of the articles are written in a laudatory tradition that
does not doubt the good intentions or the success of the program, there
are some interesting dissenting voices. Many pick up on the ambitious
name “Top Level Courses”. Lu (2008) states that from his experience,
many top professors are not willing to share the materials that they
have been teaching for decades, and that he also had this fact confirmed
by the Ministry of Education. He therefore does not believe that the
courses deserve to be called “Top Level”. This concern is echoed by
Professor A1, who says that she did not want to release all of her
material on the web, because she had struggled for many years to create
it, and does not want others to simply take it. However, she still put
up most of her materials, whereas she knows other teachers who put up as
little as they can get away with.

Wang Xiuhua (2008) is sceptical about the commitment of producers of Top
Level Courses, and believes that many simply “go through the motions”
and do not take the opportunity to rethink their own pedagogical
practices. Despite the rigorous evaluation criteria, he believes that
many universities choose famous professors to “put their name” on
courses. Many courses are not developed as part of an overall plan, but
rather quickly put together in two months, to obtain "fame". Professor
B3 is also worried about professors that enrol only to get recognition,
and are not interested in continual improvement. These do not follow up
constructive criticism of their courses, and after 3-4 years, their
courses might not have changed at all.

Even for professors that are committed to improving their own courses,
there is a sense that the Top Level Courses process does not always
support their work. Professor B1 is mainly positive, and believes that
most of the things required are things that should be present in any
good course. However, she is sceptical about the very detailed
requirements on the constitution of the teaching teams. For some courses
that are very small, this is not realistic. When she sees course
applications listing a large number of people, she often wonders if they
are really all involved in the course, or just lent their names to the
application. She believes the requirement should be to have a course
team that is appropriate for the kind of course, instead of a fixed
requirement.

There is also some concern about the increased formalization and
bureaucratization of teaching. Professor B2 was very enthusiastic about
teaching a few years ago, but now her enthusiasm is slowly disappearing.
In addition to larger class sizes, she feels that she spends a lot of
time on creating formalized lesson plans, and dealing with people who
come to listen in on her class.

There is also a problem with course websites not being maintained
properly. Lu (2008) found that according to this tests, of the 1,100
national level Top Level Courses, over half were unavailable for one
reason or another. Another survey by Qin (2008) shows that only 10% of
all the material published in the “early years” of 2003-2005 is still
available, and that most webpages have errors.

Finally, there is the danger of focusing too much on the aesthetic
aspects of the website, where some universities spend as much as 20-30%
of the award money on hiring external web design companies, rather than
focusing on the quality of the content (Wang Xiuhua 2008).

* * * * *

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)

* * * * *