Universities jump into online courses

[Photo: from VCG]

China ranks first in the number of Massive Online Open Courses-with 3,200 launched by 460 higher education institutes, including 200 courses available on foreign MOOC platforms-the Ministry of Education said on Monday.

Since 2012, China has established 10 MOOC platforms, and 55 million people have tried the courses, including more than 6 million university students who have earned credits by finishing the courses, said Wu Yan, director of the ministry's Department of Higher Education.

On Monday, the ministry selected and released the first batch of 490 national-level MOOCs, 70.2 percent of which were established by China's top universities.

Some 78 of those courses have been taken by over 100,000 learners. For example, more than 980,000 have taken the College Oral English Course developed by National University of Defense Technology. 

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI] 

(News source: ecns.cn)