1. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Linked Learning in Chinese
Higher Education
Paul Hofmann
Research Presentation
November 10, 2010

2. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Overview of
The People’s Republic of China
 Founded in 1949
 Estimated Population
of 1.3 billion
 Communist
Government
 Fourth largest
country in the world
by area

3. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Origins of
Higher Education in China
 Earliest Chinese University
dates to 1100 B.C. during the
Zhou dynasty
 During the height of the Han
Dynasty (206 B.C. – 220 A.D.),
more than 30,000 students
attended the main campus in
Chang ’An.

4. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Higher Education
in Modern China
 Today there are more
than 20 million
students are enrolled
in 2,000 colleges and
universities
 Project 211 and Project
985

5. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Origins of Linked Learning
in Chinese Higher Education
 Linked Learning in China has emerged from three
distinct generations of distance learning (Ding et al.,
2010)
 Correspondence-based education (People’s University, 1951)
 Central Chinese Radio andTV Universities (1960)
 Online Education (Qinghua University, 1998)

6. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Growth of Linked Learning
in Chinese Higher Education
 More than 166,000 Chinese students were
enrolled in recognized e-learning
programs in 2007.
 By 2008, e-learning enrollment in China
exceeds enrollment in the country’s radio
and television universities for the first
time.

7. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Barriers and Challenges to
Linked Learning in China
 Insufficient Infrastructure
 Government Censorship
 Issues with Approval and Administrative
Oversight
 Concerns about Cheating and a Perception of a
Lack of Rigor
 Legal Concerns
 Pedagogical Differences
 Teaching Differences
 Learning Differences

8. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Insufficient Infrastructure
 As of June 2010, Internet users in China reached
420 million (China Internet Network Information
Center, 2010)
 Despite being the largest linked market in the
world, approximately 900 million Chinese remain
unconnected.
 Building sufficient infrastructure is complicated
by a large geographic region with many isolated
rural areas.

9. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Government Oversight and
Authorization
 Information technologies are viewed as a
potential liberating force for democracy (Otani,
2010).
 Decisions are made by government bureaucrats,
not educators and learners (Carr-Chellman &
Zhang, 2000).
 Since 1999, only 67 COEs have been approved by
the Ministry of Education (Zhao & Jiang, 2010).
 Approval process is slow and highly politicized

10. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Cheating and a Lack of Rigor
 Concerns over quality control; rigor, and efficacy
(Ding et al., 2010)
 Lack of perceived quality and prestige
 Cheating is institutionalized in China
▪ GMAT (Damast, 2009)
▪ TOEFL / IELTS (Jaschik, 2006)

11. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Legal Concerns
 A lack of established laws governing the Linked
Learning Industry
 Faculty and Student Rights
 Concerns over Intellectual Property
▪ Curriculum
▪ Software
▪ Hardware

12. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Pedagogical Concerns
 Linked Learning is pedagogically at odds with
more than 3000 years of Chinese higher
education
 Teacher training is required to foster a student-
centered, collaborative environment
 Chinese Learners require more face-to-face
interaction with peers and instructors than
Linked Learning offers

13. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Opportunities
 Innovative partnerships with overseas
institutions
 Economic opportunities for hardware vendors
and foreign institutions
 Opportunities for ongoing social change in China
 Freedom of Speech
 Human Rights
 FairTrade

14. PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING DESIGN
Conclusions
 The development of Linked Learning in
China has mirrored the development of
the same in the United States
 Linked Learning will play an integral role in
the further expansion of Chinese Higher
Education.