Featured Website: CORE

With China poised to pass the United States in overall use of the Internet, it’s hard to imagine a better way to broaden access to education in China than to make free, high-quality educational materials available online. At the China Open Educational Resources site—or CORE, as it’s known by users—some of the world’s most prestigious universities are doing just that. Led by MIT’s OpenCourseWare program, which has put that school’s entire undergraduate curriculum online, universities in the United States, Japan, and Vietnam have so far joined the effort. By mirroring the Web sites of foreign universities on computer servers within China, CORE makes the materials far more accessible to Chinese users because their government charges them to access overseas Web sites. CORE members currently are translating all of MIT’s OpenCourseWare materials into Mandarin for use by Chinese users.

To learn more about CORE’s work, visit http://www.core.org.cn/en/index.htm

Return to the February 2008 Newsletter.