The development and operation of the online courses and the 1st Sino-Norwegian High-level Seminar on MOOC was held in Beijing on September 18-20, 2014.
The seminar was jointly organized by the Research and Development Centre for Technology Integration and the Application of Digital Learning, the Ministry of Education and the Training Centre of the Open University of China (OUC).
The top-level teams from the Latina Lab, Oslo University College's digital teaching development research lab and the MOOC project operation teams were invited to track down the latest developments and trends of MOOC worldwide. The seminar offered the attendees an opportunity to draw on the mature experience of MOOC from top international and domestic universities and educational institutions to accelerate the building of MOOC in China, enhance the level of MOOC development and operation, and promote the opening and sharing of quality educational resources.
The seminar invited Professor Helge Hoivik of Oslo University College to give lectures on the relevant curriculum developments of MOOC. Professor Hoivik has been engaged in the design and development of digital learning since 1980s, and he was once awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. His main research direction covers mobile learning, electronic textbooks, cloud computing, MOOC R&D of blended learning and teaching of MOOC, and R&D of game-based educational software. Since 2008, the Latina Lab led by him has organized several international training courses on digital learning for teachers and students from higher education institutions. These courses are mainly designed and presented by Professor Hoivik and have attracted many teachers and students from around the world. He also presided over a number of international cooperation projects, including the UNESCO project "Latina 4 Palestine" and the European Union’s "Latina Africa" project.
In addition, the operation teams of online courses from Tsinghua University and Peking University were also invited to attend the seminar to share their experience in the building and operation of MOOC.
The seminar is also the second activity-based training event for the course “Application of New Technology in Education” in the the project “Training for Online Practitioners”. The course gives an overview of the preliminary application and increasing popularity of various types of emerging ICT in current education, presents its current status and prospects of application in education, fully reflecting the OUC’s school-running concept of deep integration of information technology and education. The course presentation is a useful attempt for blended learning, with online learning as the main way of presentation and experience activity after class as a complement.
The seminar was open to the relevant personnel from higher education institutions, the online schools and the schools of continuing education in universities/colleges, RTVUs, the open universities, education training institutions, community education institutions, vocational colleges as well as training departments of enterprises.
By Mu Xingyan, the OUC