Background
Established in October 2003, China Open Resources for Education (CORE), a non-profit organization, is a consortium of universities that began with 26 IET Educational Foundation member universities and 44 China Radio and TV Universities. CORE has received approval and support for its activities from the China Ministry of Education (MOE).

Higher education has become more internationalized and has been moving towards increasing open sharing of educational resources. Inspired by these developments and having received generous support from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Dr. Fun-Den Wang, a Chinese-American and Professor Emeritus of the Colorado School of Mines, initiated and hosted a forum on Open CourseWare from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT OCW) in Beijing on September 23, 2003. This forum received the support of the China Ministry of Education (MOE). The attendees at this forum included Prof. Dick K.P. Yue, the associate dean of MIT’s school of engineering; Prof. Harold (Hal) Abelson, professor of computer science and engineering at MIT; Ms. Ann Margulies, the MIT OCW program director; Dr. Marshall Smith, the education program director of the Hewlett Foundation; Dr. Catherine Casserly, the education program officer of the Hewlett Foundation; representatives from the 26 IET Educational Foundation member universities such as Peking University and Tsinghua University; presidents from 67 pilot universities of long-distance education; and administrators from 44 China Radio and TV Universities. All attendees showed great interest in the future of open courseware and expressed their desire for further cooperation and exchange. On the basis of this forum, CORE was founded to promote the development of OCW sharing in China.

 

CORE's Mission
CORE's mission is to enhance the quality of higher education within China. Its objective is to introduce advanced courseware from MIT and other top-ranked universities around the world by using the latest information technology, teaching methodologies, instructional content and other resources to improve educational quality in China. At the same time, CORE will share advanced Chinese courseware and other quality resources with universities internationally. Through these efforts CORE strives to realize the true meaning of open sharing of resources among universities at a global level.