XuetangX, the Chinese national platform built with Open edX software, has surpassed the milestone of attracting 5 million learners.
XuetangX, one of the world’s top five MOOC providers, offers about 400 courses; 30 of them are licensed from edX under a shared-revenue agreement, and 42 include credentials. Another 63 courses are currently in production and expected to be launched in 2017. XuetangX also provides SPOCs and cloud platform services to its partner universities.
Launched on October 2013, Xuetang, which means “school” in Chinese, has a team of 130 employees –half of those technicians; by the end of 2016, it is expected to grow to 200 people.
See below the most popular MOOCs.
Its platform has been heavily modified from the core Open edX software, according to Fenghua Nie, XuetangX’s chairman and deputy secretary-general of Tsinghua University:
- “We restructured the mechanism of course grouping and presence, such that courses could be grouped and presented by major;
- we developed a self-paced mode, which was just launched from the start of September this year;
- we developed a “visualization and editing course” mode, which makes it easier for professors to edit the course; and
- we developed a website content management system, which offers more formats for information publishing and promotion.
- The course search engine and course recommendation system are both highly developed.
- The users’ learning data is presented in different perspectives for the professor to monitor the course operation and make adjustments as necessary.”
In addition to iOS and Android, Xuetang has iPad, iWatch and Smart TV apps. It also offers a channel providing self-produced content, called Xuetangxsay.
• Press Release: XuetangX: 3 Years Old and 5 Million Users.
