On the afternoon of October 4, 2013, Professor David Small from University of Canterbury in New Zealand brought to IICE his lecture in the title of “MOOCs and the Global Transformation of Higher Education”. The lecture was held in Room 723, Yingdong Building, Beijing Normal University. It was chaired by Professor Liu Baocun and attended by many Doctoral and Master’s students from IICE.
Professor Small’s research field mainly covers international comparative education, education development, education in Asia-Pacific, education philosophy and theory, globalization and etc. He has been vice president of ANZCIES since 2009; He was appointed Fulbright Senior Scholar in the legal center of Georgetown University in 2011. In the lecture, he first introduced what MOOCs is. Then he elaborated the history of distance learning, online learning and open learning. With the transformation of global higher education, education gradually becomes a consumer good, an education industry, which has changed students’ ideas towards education, their attitudes towards selecting courses and the developmental direction of university.
In the final part of the lecture, Professor David Small had a deep communication and discussion on MOOCs with the students. Professor Liu summarized the symposium and the symposium ended successfully.