Xiaoshuang (alias name) from Business School of HNU always has to spend over 20 minutes on his way from dormitory to the teaching building everyday. However, this would be changed since he got into the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), a brand new teaching platform throughout the world nowadays.

This semester, Xiaoshuang takes a course “The Way to Translation” lectured by the teacher of Shanghai International Studies University via the MOOC platform. With no fixed course agenda and no fixed lecture room, Xiaoshuang may complete the course credits anytime and anywhere.

MOOC spurred the new wave of online learning at the Silicon Valley of USA at the end of 2011.

At first, some top universities including Stanford University, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology volunteered to video their courses and upload them onto specific online platform, to share with learners worldwide. At present, there are three main online course suppliers in America, namely Coursera, Udacity and edX, and also several MOOC platforms in China, such as zhihuishu.com, moocs.org.cn and guokr.com.

Xiao Shuang takes his course through zhihuishu.com which offers an operating platform for the Course Sharing Union of the Institutions of Higher Learning in China. The Union was founded in April of 2013 and Hunan University is among the number.

Different from traditional open courses, the MOOC is not only a platform for passive learning, but also for interactions between students and teachers as well as online exercises. Hunan University specially assigns instructors for the MOOC students and arranges intensive class every two weeks.

Translated by Sun Runkai