Research questions

The first question I asked was “what is this program”. I wanted to understand all the details around how the program was organized, how courses are created and by whom, how the program is financed, and who uses the resources. The program began in 2003, so I also wanted to look at how it has changed through this time period. I then wanted to understand how it came to be launched at exactly that time in history, looking at the history of Chinese higher education for clues of trends that could have led to the program being launched. Finally, I wanted to know how different the program is from the MIT OpenCourseWare, and also how it became known among Western audiences. To summarize:

• What are the purposes of the project, how does it operate, and how has it developed since it was launched
• What were the historical circumstances that led to/informed the launch of this project
• How is the program different from, or similar to, MIT OpenCourseWare
• How was the international understanding of the project shaped?