Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Developing Digital Learning Resources for the CollegeMarket in China
Peng Ling • Zhang Ze
Published online: 11 August 2011
� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract This paper gives a brief introduction to Chinese higher education and
the current situation about the development of digital learning resources in China.
The author, from the point of view of an education publisher, analyses the existing
problems in the market of digital learning resources. Based on the practice of Higher
Education Press, the paper introduces current research works about standards,
development mode, digital learning environment, resource sharing mechanism and
other related factors.
Keywords Content management system � Customization � Digital learning
resource � Higher education � Internet � Learning � Learning resources �Management
system � Resources sharing mechanism � Standards � Templates � Test banks
Market of Digital Learning Resources for Higher Education in China
Higher education in China is mainly composed of four parts: regular higher
education, higher education for adults, tertiary vocational-technical education as
well as private higher education or non-government higher education. The regular
higher education sector plays a dominant role in the overall structure of China’s
higher education. China’s higher education has experienced sustained and rapid
growth since 1999. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Education of the
People’s Republic of China, by 2009, the number of all higher education institutions
approached 4,000, including 2,305 regular higher education institutions, 384
institutions for adult and 1,215 tertiary vocational-technical education colleges. The
nationwide scale of all kinds of higher education enrollments exceeded 29 million
P. Ling � Z. Ze (&)
Technology Center, Higher Education Press, 15 F Fusheng Building, 4 Huixindongjie,
Chaoyang District, Beijing 100029, China
e-mail: [email protected]
123
Pub Res Q (2011) 27:354–363
DOI 10.1007/s12109-011-9234-3
and the gross enrolment rate was more than 24% [1]. The Outline of Mid-and-long
Term National Education Development (2010–2020) has been issued and the
number of higher education students will increase from 29 million to 35 million.
The scale of higher education in China is the largest in the world due to the immense
population base.
China’s higher education began to accelerate the construction of information-
based education at the turn of the 20th century, passed through more than 10 years
development, and has made some achievements in the development of infrastructure
facilities. Almost all universities and colleges have established their own campus
network. Namely, more than 44% of classrooms are equipped with advanced
multimedia facilities; 52.7% of higher education institutions have online teaching
platforms; more than half of courses integrate multimedia and web technologies
with the traditional teaching patterns; and the student–computer ratio is close to 3:1.
With the further development of IT applications to higher education, the demand
for digital learning resources has greatly increased. All kinds of digital resources,
ranging from simple transcribed texts, slides, audio–video clips, animation to CAI
software, online courses, test banks and immersive virtual reality models, are widely
used in multimedia classroom teaching, online learning, job-skill training, and
performance evaluation. Teachers, some professional software companies and
publishers are developing a large number of digital resources to meet the huge
market demand.
Problems of Digital Learning Resources Development
Founded in 1954, Higher Education Press (HEP) has maintained its reputation as a
leading educational publisher in China for over half a century. Since 1980s, HEP
has been committed to development and application of digital learning resources for
universities and colleges. In the practice during the past two decades, as an
educational publisher, we think that it is obvious the market for digital learning
resources is enjoying a boom, but there still exist several problems which impede
the rapid and sustainable development of this market in China.
Development Team
Digital learning resource creation requires both subject expertise and technical
expertise. At present, higher educational institutes play a very important role in
higher educational digital learning resources development. Lots of digital resources
are developed by students under professors’ guidance. It is a very typical developing
method. However, these development teams mostly made up by students are
unstable and lack of experience. Some digital learning resource projects are also
created by special software companies. Professional knowledge is always hard to be
understood by technical personnel for these companies. Consequently, one of the
most valuable commodities in the development of digital resources is staff who
understands both the subject area, education and the technical issues. The problem is
that such talent is currently scarce in China.
Pub Res Q (2011) 27:354–363 355
123
Standard and Mechanism for Sharing
Web-based and digital education is still in the stage of beginning in China. With the
constantly increasing scale, lots of digital learning resources are developed to
support its ongoing expansion. But due to the lack of unified technology
specification, metadata standards and scientific resource management platforms,
the resources developed separately are difficult to exchange. Unfortunately, this
causes a mass of low-level redundant development. Meanwhile more efficient
mechanism for sharing should be established to ensure the sustainable exploration
and development [2, 3].
Cost and Benefit
It is known that huge costs or investments are needed to create and update digital
learning resources. The China Ministry of Education has invested a considerable
size of funds and initiated some projects to encourage higher educational institutes
and enterprises to undertake digital learning resources development. The funds
allocated to develop and purchase digital resources in universities and colleges are
increasing over the past years. Publishers and technology companies also pour
money into some projects of digital resources creation to respond to the market
demand. However, the government investment is limited; students in universities
and colleges do not wish to pay for digital learning materials; free e-Learning
resources are widely available on the Internet for reference and use; and DRM
remains to be solved. Little profits cool developers off toward digital resources
developing. It is most essential for digital learning resources markets to find an
effective business model to balance the cost and benefits in order to maintain
continuing investment.
Service and Customization
Compared with traditional teaching and learning, more technology skills are needed
in digital education. The teaching methods and teaching contents are more flexible
in this arena. Moreover, students hope to get individualized instruction and learning
materials. Most teachers do not have much experience and enough technology in
this regard. Some teachers are usually reluctant to use digital teaching resources
because they consider that digital education increases their workload. As a result,
one of the key success factors is to provide timely technical support and
personalization service during the application and acceptance of digital learning
resources and products.
Practice of Higher Education Press
With the coming of digital economy age, as a leading player in China’s education
publishing market, Higher Education Press (HEP) has been transforming from a
conventional textbook publisher to an educational resource and service provider in
356 Pub Res Q (2011) 27:354–363
123
the global market, aiming to provide various digital teaching and learning resources
to meet the need of e-publishing and digital education. HEP regards the market
demand as the goal during the development and promotion of digital resources. HEP
makes every effort to explore actively the potential demands and makes efforts to
qualify and quantify the demands. Then it organizes a professional development
team, assists in communication between subject expertise and technical staff, and
provides uniform standards/tools/templates and high quality materials. As the
publisher HEP design products and manages projects, collects and manages digital
resources based on effective sharing mechanisms. It also includes in the added value
chain the processes and editing of digital contents, reorganizes digital resources and
integrates customized products, and provides training and service.
The following sections outline the major work of HEP and what we have learned
in developing digital learning resources for Chinese college market.
Standards and Tools
During a long time development of digital learning resources, on a basis of
international general standards, HEP has gradually built up a series of standards and
norms for technology requirement on multimedia materials (Graphs, Audio, Video
clips, Flash/3D animations, etc.), development specification of online courses,
construction standard of resources repository, HEPBookDTD (DTD for HEP’s
textbooks), HEPTestItemDTD (DTD for each item of test banks), HEPJournalDTD
(DTD for HEP’s Journals) and other elements involved in digital publishing.
Referred to as the SCORM standard, we have defined a basic set of metadata
elements to describe general, educational, technical and copyright attributes of
digital resources. Of course, the metadata can be extended in accordance with
unique requirements associated with diverse disciplines and application areas.
Digital resources tagged with appropriate metadata are stored and managed in
HEP’s Content Management System (CMS), which makes the resources discovery
and retrieval rapidly.
HEPBookDTD defines the overall structure and the components of HEP’s typical
textbook. According to HEPBookDTD, the contents of textbooks are structured to
be semantic elements (e.g. introduction, text, example, quiz, etc.) which are stored
as digital learning materials in CMS and can be reused in other contexts.
HEPBookDTD includes not only text contents of paper books but also multimedia
components that can be displayed on diverse electronic media. The result is that the
HEPBookDTD is also a core standard of HEP’s cross-media production system.
In order to put the standards into better practice, HEP has created corresponding
tools and templates for developers and provides operation training. Take test bank
as an example. Test item input tools of each subject are developed and delivered to
authors in different colleges and universities. Test items created on-line or off-line
with these input tools are collected, and then can be transferred automatically to
XML files which relate to HEPTestItemDTD standard. The content of online
courses is required to be packaged with RELOAD Editor to ensure that the online
courses are SCORM conformant and can be viewed in diverse learning management
systems. Even for the development of PowerPoint slides which are the most
Pub Res Q (2011) 27:354–363 357
123
commonly used by teachers, we also built several templates and can recommend
these to teachers. Elements of these templates, including title layout, color scheme,
font sizes/styles, function buttons, background, etc., are exquisitely designed to
process discipline features and aesthetics. As a result, teachers can place more
attention on content development. Based on a unified template, these slides created
by independent authors have a whole united style for more convenient reorgani-
zation. A slide example of organic chemistry repository is shown in Fig. 1.
These standards and tools have been optimized gradually in a wide range of
applications, not only in HEP but also in the other higher education and educational
publishing industry in China. The promotion and application of these standards and
tools enhance the quality and utilization rate of digital learning resources and thus
reduce developing costs effectively.
Organizer and Communicator
As mentioned above, higher educational institutes play a very important role in the
development of higher education digital learning resources in China. The role of
HEP is no longer just a publisher and seller, but an organizer and communicator
throughout the whole development of digital learning resources. For creating an
important project, in order to facilitate the successful implementation, a cross-
functional team is established in HEP. Such a team may include a project manager,
managing editors, technical editors, marketing staff and so on. The main job of the
Fig. 1 A slide example of organic chemistry repository
358 Pub Res Q (2011) 27:354–363
123
team is to perform market research, focus on user needs, recruit developing team
members principally composed of academics and research students from a higher
education institution or consortium of institutions. They will determine a proper
technical approach with expertise, work out project plan with details, track progress
against the project timetable, help communicate effectively between subject
expertise and technical staff, design product format. They will also work closely
with sales and marketing to promote applications of digital resources, solicit user
feedback for product improvement, etc. The development mode of digital learning
resource in HEP is briefly sketched in Fig. 2.
HEP has a group of technical staff engaged in digital publishing for a long period,
as well as a group of integrated specialists who understand both the subject area and
the technical issues. HEP has made a series of training plans to explain educational
technology and digital publishing technology for all the staff. We would like more
and more employees of HEP to be professional managers of the digital learning
resource creation projects (Figs. 3, 4).
Digital Learning Environment and Customization
On the one hand, HEP develops digital learning resources in partnership with higher
education institutions. On the other hand, HEP is making great efforts to build up a
friendly digital learning environment to help teachers and students use digital
resources more conveniently and effectively.
HEP began to develop web-based learning management system named 4A
(anyone, anytime, anywhere, anything) in 1999. During the past decade, 4A
continues to be updated and releasing new versions to provide strong support for
speedy development of digital education.
4A is an infrastructure platform of HEP to deliver digital contents and services. It
is also an important communication channel between HEP and students. By 2010,
there are more than 2,000 titles available with internet access code in HEP.
Fig. 2 Development mode of digital learning resource in HEP
Pub Res Q (2011) 27:354–363 359
123
Instructors and students who use these textbooks can log on a 4A learning center to
browse or download relevant digital learning resources provided by HEP, such as
PowerPoint slides for faculty, interactive quizzes for students, multimedia teaching
and learning materials, FAQ, examination papers and so on. In a 4A learning center,
users can also chat with others in real time, discuss some questions on discussion
boards, and send short messages to other users or HEP’s editors. More valuable
information about users’ need may be obtained according to the statistical data
documenting user access, activities and user feedback.
Some universities and colleges have professional computer network equipment
and full-time system administrator/webmaster to maintain online learning manage-
ment systems. Then the 4A can be installed on local servers of these institutions.
Resource data packages provided by HEP are transferred and updated through
networks. For those universities and colleges which have not enough technical
personnel and funds to have their own e-learning system, HEP provides ASP/JSP
solutions based on 4A. Teachers can initiate online courses for their own students on
4A platform hosted by HEP. Teachers can publish and edit course documents easily
in any format (text, PDF, HTML, video, etc.) from local or course resource
Fig. 3 Q&A interface of 4A platform
360 Pub Res Q (2011) 27:354–363
123
repository provided by HEP; post and mark assignments, quizzes and exams online;
create and monitor customized sequences of learning activities for specified group.
HEP’s editors and technicians provide comprehensive service including mainte-
nance and upgrade for system hardware and software, 24 9 7 technical support,
training, even including assistance to teachers for users management, students’
usage and assessments report, and course content construction.
In the 4A digital learning environment, HEP develops online courseware, course
resources repository, test banks and frequent Q&A database for more than 100 basic
courses. Authorized instructors can make use of these resources, add some local
materials, tailor and edit the content, then quickly create their own online course to
suit students’ diverse needs, abilities and learning styles.
According to investigations made in traditional textbook courses, it is correcting
homework that is one of the heaviest burdens for teachers, especially in subjects of
science and engineering. That is still true in digital learning environment. On the
basis of 4A platform, HEP is developing homework systems for some subjects such
as mathematics and physics to help teachers be free from correcting homework.
Instructors can select questions from test bank to assign homework. For objective-
based questions like multiple choice or true–false questions, students can do these
questions online and get grade and feedback instantly. Subjective questions like
proof and calculation questions are elaborated that can be done step by step online.
For each step, students can see hints and tips to solve problem, sample questions and
associated knowledge points. Each student’s results of all steps are recorded by a
special homework system. The analysis of these records can help instructors realize
information and problems of students about learning for solving them rapidly.
Besides the 4A online learning platform, HEP also developed other tools and
systems such as computer grade examination simulation system and class
preparation system. These supporting tools are indispensable in the market of
digital learning resources development.
National Excellent Curriculum Resource Center
Over the years, government and non-profit organizations have invested funds and
effort to develop many free digital learning resources. For example, the Education
Ministry of the People’s Republic of China (MOE) launched ‘‘National Exquisite
Curriculum Construction Project’’ in 2003. Abundant digital resources covering
over 4,000 courses have piled up over 7 years development. HEP set up the
‘‘National Exquisite Curriculum Resource Center’’ in 2007 to avoid duplication of
efforts and maximize reusing projects that are approved by MOE.
National Exquisite Curriculum Resource Center (www.jingpinke.com) is an
e-commerce platform to assist teachers and students to acquire such resources from
various providers, as well as to facilitate the sharing of digital learning resources
designed by teachers. The main content and functions are as follows:
• Full display for over 4,000 national exquisite courses, content arrives for
provincial and school exquisite courses, build the largest and most authoritative
platform to exhibit domestic exquisite courses.
Pub Res Q (2011) 27:354–363 361
123
• Collect over 3,000 foreign Open Course Ware from MIT, the Johns Hopkins
University, University of Tokyo, Open University of the United Kingdom and
others.
• Build up resource repositories for 73 subjects which involve hundreds of
thousands of digital materials and tens of hundreds of CAI software. These
resource repositories provide a solid resource base for higher education.
• Advocate the concept of ‘‘resources sharing, exchange of the needed’’
information, provide a platform based on cumulated score systems to facilitate
resource-exchange for teachers and individual users.
• Set up special discussion forums to communicate with others around the latest
buzzwords such as ‘‘teaching reform’’, ‘‘teaching management’’, ‘‘teaching
quality’’, ‘‘digital resources development’’.
Conclusions
The development of digital learning resources in China is still in its early stages
now. It has a huge development space and great potential to grow steadily. Although
confronted with many difficulties, we are still actively making great efforts to solve
problems and explore new methods in order to promote the positive, professional
and fast development of this market. Meanwhile the General Administration of
Fig. 4 The interface of resource center on www.jingpinke.com
362 Pub Res Q (2011) 27:354–363
123
Press and Publication (GAPP) of China launched a series of projects to enforce the
development of law and technology on DRM.
HEP is continuing to strengthen the communications and cooperation with
foreign publishers and enterprises, learn the advanced experiences and technologies,
accelerate development of digital learning resources, elevate service level, so as to
meet the needs of digital education.
References
1. Ministry of Education. Statistical Communique on the 2009 national education development. 2010.
2. Xiaohao D. The challenges faced by Chinese higher education as it expands in scale. Chin Educ Soc.
2004;1:36–53.
3. Margaryan A, Littlejohn A. Repositories and communities at cross-purposes: issues in sharing and
reuse of digital learning resources. J Comput Assist Learn. 2008;24(4):333–47.
Pub Res Q (2011) 27:354–363 363
123
