Xi'an Jiaotong University - Internet Education

Internet Education

As the rapid development and the fast growth of requirement of e-learning, Internet Education School of Xi'an Jiaotong University was founded in March 2001 as one of the first 15 experimental universities approved by Education Ministry of P. R. China. As one of the important projects of "Action Plan", more than RMB 5 million has been invested to E-Learning project since 1999, now a hybrid international standard distance-learning system based on satellite and CERNET was built up and more than 100 multimedia coursewares had been developed.

With the strong support of excellent XJTU educational resources and management experience, IES is striving for establishing a multi-level and multi-form distance education. With the basic maxim of "Basing on the western, Orienting towards the whole country, Connecting overseas", XJTU's E-Learning emphasizes at after-school education to meet the increasingly growth of continue education.

So far there are 51 distance learning sites scattered in all of China and about 2,800 students, majoring in Computer, Nursing, Management, Law, and Economics. The goal before 2005 is to build up 80 distance learning sites, and recruit about 8000 students.

With the satellite and the internet, XJTU has some cooperations with WAS of Japan and Taiwan National Chiao Tung University. University has already made some live teaching and resources transmission experiments. Since September 2002, XJTU has begun to cooperate with Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Zhejiang University, so three universities take the cooperative teaching method such as sharing some optional courses and admitting the corresponding credits. Now there are more than 6,700 students taking such elective courses from 37 shared courses provided by three universities.

The university also earnestly pays attention to the study of E-Learning theory, technology and application. Since 1998, the university has undertaken 12 very important national projects, such as Action Plan project "Multi-media Distance Education System and Project"; Education Ministry approved large project "the Demonstrate Project of Internet Education Based on Satellite and Terrestrial Networks"; "Tenth Five-Year Plan" key project "real-time teaching system"; National Science Fund project "Study of Individual and Interactive Virtual Collaborative Learning Environment" and "Study and Application of Personality Mining in E-Learning". By research, the University has already applied 3 invention Patents of P. R. China. The achievement of "the distance learning system over satellite and internet" was awarded as second prize for scientific and technology development of state education ministry. Another achievement was awarded as the first prize by Shaanxi Province. XJTU also got an IBM SUR project, which provided the university two IBM H85 Servers. Now, the university has 7 servers, more than 80 lab PCs, and own an advanced network infrastructure. XJTU has established a set of supporting platform based on the combinative utilization of satellite and terrestrial networks. In general, Internet Education School is progressing at an unprecedented speed.