| With rapid development of information technology, educational reform relying on the Internet is taking place worldwide. Development of higher education has been pushing forward on informatization and sharing. With its unique concept of openness and sharing, such reform not only provides tremendous opportunities to learning-based society and life-long learners, but also brought great challenges to traditional education.In the early 21 st century, there were three in-depth integrations between higher education and the Internet, open courses continue to develop in many countries. In 2011, China largely transformed and upgraded open course resources that were available at that time. China also pushed forward the initiation to develop new national premium open course series and create iconic open course resources. MOOC emerged in 2012 and United Kingdom, a veteran industrial empire with the most advance distance education technology, founded Europe’s largest MOOC project – FutureLearn, and this project is advancing in a steady but fast pace.This paper compares China’s national premium open course series and British’s FutureLearn from three aspects, namely operation mechanism, platform establishment and resources, using methodologies including literature reviews, comparison, statistical analysis and case studies. Based on the conclusions drawn from similarities and differences between these two projects, suggestions for improving China’s national premium open course series are as follow. To develop this series further, build a sound and efficient operation mechanism with the introduction of market economy; put the concept of “openness and sharing” in action and establish a strong platform for course resources; and satisfy learners’ needs by emphasizing on the quality and practicality of curriculum offered. |
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