China's MOOC platform, the world's largest scale of Massive Open Online Courses, has made remarkable achievements in advancing the development and application of online education, Song Yi, an official from the Ministry of Education said on Jan 26.Song introduced the progress of the MOOC platform at a news conference, highlighting the following aspects:

In 2020, the Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance was established, which is the first multilateral international organization in the field of higher education digitalization initiated and led by China. The alliance is chaired by Tsinghua University, with 17 renowned universities and six online education institutions from 16 countries as members.

In 2023, the Global MOOC and Online Education Conference was held abroad for the first time in Italy, attracting over 180 leaders and experts from more than 70 higher education institutions, online education platforms, international organizations and government agencies from 21 countries.

Over the past year, international exchange and cooperation in online teaching have been deepened. Leveraging the alliance, the MOOC platform offered 341 global integrated courses, launched 10 global integrated certificate programs and attracted nearly 25.4 million learners. The platform also organized 88 Chinese universities to provide nearly 300 high-level courses to Indonesia, covering over 3,000 institutions in the country. Additionally, professional training courses have been established in domestic and international universities and smart classrooms were built in Asian and African countries to cultivate international talents.

Furthermore, the MOOC platform has released two international reports on the digitalization development and index for two consecutive years, incorporating authoritative data from world-renowned higher education institutions with a proposal of strategies against educational challenges, which has provided the scientific basis and data support for the digital development of higher education worldwide.

Song stated that after 10 years of development, the MOOC platform has launched over 76,000 courses, serving learners both domestically and internationally, and it has evolved into an international brand in the field of global higher education.

Source: xinhuanet.com