OERs and China
I was recently teaching a session on online distance learning as part of the e-Learning MSc here in Oxford. During this I asked the students to critique an OER as an examples of effective online distance learning (or not). As part of this one of our students, Kitty Tong reported on her experience of OER use in China which revealed a picture of much more systematic reuse than seems to be the case in most other palces.
She demonstrated Core (China Open Resource for Education) which act as a portal for OERs in China (there may be many others). In particular it was amazing to hear about the amount of volunteer translation taking place and the extent that students were making their own informal learning opportunities around these resources. Her description reminded me of some of the vision of independent learning, collaboration and reuse the OpenLearn team had for their resources which was only realised to a limited extent.
Now all I need to do is learn Chinese so that I can check this out properly for myself.