Development of Open and Distance Education in 2012
In the past year, considerable progress has been made in open and distance education in China as well as in other countries.
The Ministry of Education issued Ten-Year Development Plan for National Education Informationization (2011-2020) in March 2012 and Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Informationization of Vocational Education in May 2012. In July, the Open University of China was officially established with an inauguration ceremony at the Great Hall of the People. At the inauguration, Beijing RTVU and Shanghai RTVU were renamed Beijing Open University and Shanghai Open University. Pilot programmes will be expanded at the open universities of Yunnan, Jiangsu and Guangdong as well. In September, the National Videophone Work Conference on Education Informationization was held, which was the first full-scale work conference of its kind since the establishment of the new China. On September 25-27, the first "National Exhibit of IT Application in Primary and Middle School Teaching" cosponsored by the Ministry of Education and Shenzhen Municipal Government was held in Shenzhen. In November, the Eleventh China International Distance Education Conference was successfully held. Under the theme “Technology Development and Education Innovation for a Changing World”, the conference focused on the new changes, challenges and opportunities currently facing the industry and centered discussion on new pathways of innovation in the industry. In December, the national public service platform for educational resources officially began trial operations online, thus comprehensively promoting the joint construction and sharing of digital education resources.
2012 could be referred to as the “year of subversion” or the “year of destruction”. In 2012, the two education technology companies of Coursera and Udacity together with Harvard University’s non-profit online education website edX not only provided the public with a great number of online courses but also attracted global attention and participation in large–scale, open online courses. Their explosive growth challenges and subverts traditional models of higher education. As of September 2012, Coursera launched partnerships with 35 universities from 8 different countries to promote free online courses. As of November, Coursera had more than 1.9 million people from 196 countries registered for at least one course.
Outlook for China’s Open and Distance Education in 2013
With 2012 behind us, we must learn from past experiences, findings and accomplishments, and seriously reflect on the problems, opportunities and challenges before us. Especially important is forecasting future trends and development directions.
The 31st Statistical Report on China's Internet Development recently issued by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in Beijing reports that as of December 2012, China had 564 million Internet users with an Internet penetration rate of 42.1%. The increasing popularity of the Internet and mobile terminals, and the rise of public information literacy and interactive online learning have laid a solid foundation for the development of open and online education.
However, in the field of online education in China today, non-real-time teaching using video-based courses is still the mainstream. Real-time online education is just now taking off, and learning systems are starting to develop hybrid learning models. In 2013, higher education institutions (HEIs) and primary and middle schools will start to adopt hybrid learning models more widely; the Khan Academy model and the “flipped classroom” model will be gradually recognized, adopted and promoted. Models of open and online education will continue to evolve, and the integration of learning with entertainment (learning games) and social networks will further promote the development of open and online education and its acceptance by the industry, educators and learners.
Internationally, the open educational resources movement is in full swing. The open video courses of international universities give domestic learners a glimpse of the teaching styles of renowned scholars at the world's top universities. Domestically, universities are fully engaged in the construction of open video classes and national quality resource shared classes. The construction of micro classes, which feature short video segments, is also actively underway with the help of competitions.
In 2013, open and distance education will undergo further development. Experience shows that people will gradually turn their attention from external factors to core aspects, from resource construction to application, and from scale to quality and accreditation. Online training, web-based lifelong learning and autonomous learning are enjoying increasing recognition and acceptance. Online education continues to win the trust of investors. Though China has a considerable online education market, the industry's business model has long stagnated at the e-commerce stage of selling courseware and teaching materials. In 2013, the business model of web-based sharing of online skills will mature, and online skill sharing enterprises with effective solutions for course development, teaching staff, business models and assessment methods, will grow rapidly.
In 2013, more money will be invested in online education. Statistics show that since 2011, driven by the wave of mobile internet technology, there were nearly 10 instances of financing exceeding $10 million USD in the global online education industry. CB Insights, an investment information services firm, reports that education technology companies pocketed about $1.37 billion USD of financing from venture capitalists in 2012.
As capital markets warm up to China’s education industry, investors will court China's online education enterprises in 2013, and competition in the industry will increase. However, the majority of entrepreneurs in open and online education will focus more on IT factors than on educational factors, and more on online factors than offline factors. Limitations in understanding the essence of learning, teaching, training and education will certainly have an influence over whether the online education business will succeed.
Issues in Open and Online Education
In retrospect, the field of open and distance education in China has certainly come a long way. Looking forward, in what directions should China’s open and distance education develop and what adjustments should be made? Moreover, incorporating local and international perspectives, how should we treat school education in light of the development of open education? These issues will be the common focus of the industry and academia in 2013.
What are the major obstacles in China’s development of online education? In my view, people’s inner motivation for learning, the online learning environment (interactiveness and immersiveness in particular), network access, accreditation and quality control are among the main obstacles and bottlenecks we face.
Armed with experience in constructing National Excellent Courses, we now face the issues of constructing and applying open video courses and quality resource shared classes; most of all, the issue of how to maximize their application is yet unresolved. In December 2012, the national public service platform for educational resources officially began trial operations online. How can online education, MOOCs and similar offerings serve as a supplement to help improve the quality of professional cultivation? What inspiration and experience do they bring to the construction and application of China’s open educational resources and to the online education of HEIs? These will be the core issues that researchers and practitioners of open and online education consider in 2013.
Innovation in mobile technology has led to advancements in education and classroom learning and provided students with the opportunity to learn anytime, anywhere. Mobile terminals like the smartphone, tablet computer, e-book reader and laptop are becoming more popular and mobile applications (apps) more plentiful. From the rapid development of 1:1 digital learning overseas to the proliferation of e-schoolbag projects here in China, the ranks of online learners are growing with the help of wireless networks and mobile terminals. With gradual improvements in user experience, education apps are redefining the business models and service models of online education. We predict that mobile learning will become one of the most rapidly adopted fields in education technology.
China's service market for online degree and non-degree education is staggering in size and scope. National conditions are such that more and more people will acquire schooling or improve their skills online in the future. However, public awareness of online education, learners’ sense of remoteness and study habits, quality control and accreditation systems will continue to be major factors constraining online education. Compared with other forms of online education, degree education and extra-curricular tutorial for primary and middle students will continue to lead in popularity. Online skill sharing education will lead by far in terms of profitability.
China's experiment in modern distance education started in 2000 and is still underway. The 68 pilot online colleges, the CCRTVU system and related online and distance education companies comprise the three most important forces in open and distance education in China. In 2012, the 68 online colleges are operating successfully, and other HEIs are anxious to get in the game, not content to let these 68 schools carve up the online education world. The OUC, Beijing Open University and Shanghai Open University have been officially established, and RTVUs in Yunnan, Jiangsu, Guangdong and others are preparing for their own open universities. How does one open a university? How does one ensure that the change from RTVU to open university is a meaningful and positive reformation, and not simply a name change? Online degree education, extra-curricular tutorial for primary and middle school students, and online skill sharing training will be the three hottest battlegrounds for growing investor enthusiasm. Where are the new growth points? What is the most successful business model? These questions will be hot topics for the year 2013.
If, some day, the Ministry of Education releases restrictions on pilot locations, more and more universities will get involved, possibly to the extent of each university having its own online college. If, further on, more and more universities turn into online universities, the boundary between traditional universities featuring face-to-face teaching and online colleges featuring online education will get blurrier. If this were to occur, how would the open universities (converted RTVUs) and pilot online colleges deal with such a trend? How does one remain invincible in the online education market? Will today's online colleges someday suffer the fate of the provincial and municipal educational colleges of the past?
All of these issues are worthy of reflection.
About the author: JIAO Jianli, vice president of the College of Educational Information Technology of South China Normal University and vice director of the Future Education Research Center.