 On Nov, 16th and 18th, 2005, seminars on Open Education and Its Management System, which were sponsored by CORE(China Open Resource for Education), were respectively held in Core¡¯s lead universities, Beijing Jiaotong University and Dalian University of Technology.
On Nov, 16th, seminar on Open Education and Its Management System was held in Room 712, Siyuan Building in Beijing Jiaotong University. Nearly 30 scholars, including Chairman Fun-dun Wang, Chairmen of Core, Prof. Dianqiu Liu, advanced advisor of Core, Prof. David Wiley, Director of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning and Assistant in the Department of Instructional Technology at Utah State University and scholars from top universities and organizations in China and abroad attended the conference.
 Prof Wang introduced Core¡¯s efforts and accomplishments since its establishment briefly, and expressed his sincere expectation for the development of open education in China.
Prof. David Wiley from Utah State University, who was grandly invited by CORE, stated the current condition of teaching and learning and the challenges education in the world was encountering at present, and introduced new instructional softwares, eduCommons and OLS (Open Learning Support), which were developed under the idea of open education. David pointed out that the world was changed, so education must also change accordingly. Education is now challenged on every front, including content, research, expertise, and credentialing. We need education to be digital instead of analog, open instead of closed, mobile instead of tethered, connected instead of isolated, personal instead of generic, and participatory instead of consuming. But how will education change? Are online classes the answer? David pointed out that they are just a part of the answer. Online classes are digital, mobile, but closed, isolated, general and consuming. So we need to be open. Openness enables education to be connecting, personalizing and participating. The very software, eduCommons, can enable us to be open.
 David introduced in details every function and operation methodology of eduCommons, and by giving us 3 examples, illustrated the great differences between modern education and traditional education in the perspective of content, technology and cultural problems. The attendees raised questions about the ways of getting open resource ware, licensing problem, executive organizing and so on. Distance education model in US and the relationship between online- class and traditional class were also discussed. David explained the questions clearly and introduced some experiences of open education in US.
 Finally, he introduced the open learning support system, OLS. By enabling users to self-organize into informal groups, OLS seeks to facilitate free and open educational support opportunities that scale to extremely large numbers of learners. By using eduCommons and OLS, we can realize the idea of open education more perfectly.
All attendees exchanged their ideas about the advanced  educational software, eduCommons and OLS and got their needed information satisfactorily. The conference got its success in an ardent atmosphere.
On Nov, 18th, Prof. David attended the seminar on Open Education and Its Management System in Dalian University of Technology, which was analogous to the seminar in Beijing. On the seminar, David introduced eduCommons and OLS to the attendees once again and discussed some problems about instructional technology. During the ardent discussion, the seminar in Dalian also got an exciting identical success. |
