Keywords: digital resources; sharing; standard; platform; mechanism

Introduction

With the rapid development of information technology and the Internet, the amount of digital information worldwide is increasing exponentially. According to IDC (International Data Corp.) data, the total amount of global digital information was 800 EB in 2009 and increased to 1.2 ZB in 2010. Jim Held, head of Intel Corporation's scale computing research project, believes that the annual growth rate of global digital information exceeds 60% at present. As education is one of mankind's most important activities, information technology and the Internet have of course penetrated every aspect of teaching and learning. More and more instructional resources are produced, delivered and stored in digital form. Nevertheless, most resources are scattered across different learning platforms, websites and teachers’ PCs, and adhere to different technical standards, which makes the aggregation, reuse and sharing of digital learning resources difficult.

Educational and scientific institutions have launched many research projects and practices in order to address the above problems and meet the urgent need of joint construction and sharing caused by the rapid proliferation of digital learning resources. The Open University of China （hereinafter referred to as the OUC） has contributed to this effort as well, successively undertaking the National Modern Distance Education Resource Repository Engineering Construction Project of the Ministry of Education (hereinafter referred to as the MoE) and Network Education E-learning Resource Center Construction Project of the MoE and Ministry of Finance hereinafter referred to as the MoF). The development of these projects has given great impetus to the construction of an e-learning resource center and the joint construction and sharing of high quality e-learning resources.

1. The Goal and Significance of E-learning Resource Center Construction

Resource sharing has been a long-standing issue in the educational field. The main problem is the lack of uniform resource standards and application platform interfaces between educational institutions (including colleges and universities, enterprises and professional training organizations), which results in difficulties in resource integration and sharing, and lack of interoperability between application software. Furthermore, different administrative divisions lead to administrative fragmentation; educational institutions lack the necessary channels for timely and open communication regarding resource construction and sharing. Thus, existing high quality resources fail to be deployed effectively, and a large amount of redundant resource construction occurs. This not only wastes money and resources but also hampers the improvement of the quality of education.

State educational departments have always attached great importance to the construction and sharing of high quality learning resources. Since 2003, various research and implementation projects related to resource sharing have been approved at the national level, boosting the efficiency and effectiveness of distance education resource sharing. As one of the public system construction projects under the Undergraduate Teaching Quality and Teaching Reform Project in Colleges and Universities, the Network Education E-learning Resource Center Construction Project was initiated in March 2008 by the MoE and MoF. The project aims to integrate quality network education courses and various quality e-learning resources that have been built by the state and institutions of higher education, build the relevant systems and public service platform for these resources, promote the opening and sharing of high quality e-learning resources, reduce low-quality redundant construction, provide quality instructional resources to educational institutions, teachers and students, and thus improve the quality of education. The overall goal of the project is to construct a national e-learning resource center, effectively integrate various educational resources, promote the opening and sharing of high quality e-learning resources and provide resource support for network education and lifelong learning. It serves the needs of higher education, vocational education and continuing education, and ultimately promotes a learning-oriented society. Specific goals include constructing a distributed storage and repository system with unified administration; establishing an efficient resource management and application system, connecting major learning platforms and instructional management systems, and supporting a scale of millions of users; integrating no less than 5000 courses with a data volume of 50 TB; establishing the initial mechanism and mode of resource sharing and providing resource sharing services to institutions and members of society.

After the National Outline for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020) (hereinafter referred to as the Outline) was issued, many people including interim project inspection experts lauded the project's farsightedness. Based on the strategic goals for education development put forward in the Outline, from the reform of personnel training to the "overpass" of exploring lifelong learning to the enhanced use of IT in education, the project has had a special significance. The next phase of implementing the Outline revolves around two key terms: one is equal access to education, which is often reflected in the sharing of high quality educational resources (not simply teaching resources) with the public. The other is improving the quality of teaching. How to make full use of high quality resources to improve teaching quality and how to build a new quality improvement mechanism in a developing country lacking quality educational resources such as China — these are issues that will significantly determine the future development of education.

In the long run, the most fundamental goal of implementing the project is to build a national e-learning resource center, which is important in the following five aspects:

Firstly, to support the construction of degree education and non-degree education of the OUC, and provide socialized services.

Secondly, to provide resource support and services for degree education and non-degree education at local open universities and network education schools.

Thirdly, to provide e-learning resource support to various educational and training organizations such as regular institutions of higher learning and vocational colleges.

Fourthly, to provide diversified e-learning support services to the public, for instance, support individualized study for community learners. This type of direct-to-learner service is of public benefit, which becomes increasingly evident as the service develops.

Fifthly, to promote international transmission and sharing of high quality e-learning resources, that is, bring foreign high quality e-learning resources into China while offering our e-learning resources abroad.

Therefore, the construction of an e-learning resource center plays an important fundamental role, not only in the development of open universities, but also the development of modern distance education in China and the construction of a learning-oriented society.

2．Basic Thoughts about E-learning Resource Center Construction

The implementation of educational resource sharing is influenced and restricted by many factors including participants' views, resource content, sharing technology, service mode, profit distribution, policy orientation, etc. Thus, for the construction and long-term operation of a national e-learning resource center that integrates massive amounts of resources and serves millions of users, it is necessary to analyze and clarify the following five related factors and their interrelationships: users, resources, system, procedure and structure.

The e-learning resource center serves as a public service entity providing e-learning resources to the whole society. Its users include resource users as well as resource providers. Resources are not limited just to educational and teaching resources but cover resource repository systems, various application systems and key technologies for supporting efficient operation, and even cover policies related to promoting learning resources into the sharing platform. Procedure and system refer to the mechanisms, control systems, business and service regulations, implementation plans and organizations formed during the course of resource sharing, service and management. Structure refers to product structure, functional structure of the platform and business structure developed in response to the needs of the market. The interaction between these five factors influence the development of the e-learning resource center (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Factors Influencing the Construction and Operation of Network Education E-learning Resource Center

In other words, the construction and operation of an e-learning resource center is neither a purely technical problem nor a simple physical aggregation task; it involves many complex problems in terms of technology, environment, economy, management, culture, etc. To solve these problems, it is necessary to have a clear thought process and an overall plan, achieve breakthroughs in key areas and make coordinated advancement. The construction process should focus on the research and implementation of e-learning resource sharing mechanisms, standards, technologies and platform, addressing in particular the most fundamental and critical issues affecting resource sharing. The detailed tasks are as follows:

Research of user demand, resource status, resource standards and sharing mechanism models; design of resource repository, repository application system and learning platform; research in related areas such as key technologies, credit banks, resource evaluation, intellectual property protection, information security, etc.

Research and development of resource repository system, repository application system and learning platform; formulation of resource integration standards and specifications; integration and collection of course resources required by demonstration centers; completion of projects such as resource evaluation and credit bank development.

Application demonstrations were conducted showcasing phased accomplishments in the areas of resource sharing and application mechanism design, development of the public service platform, standardized integration of e-learning resources, etc.

3．Key Problems in E-learning Resource Center Construction

3.1 Mechanism and Mode of Resource Sharing

Many educational institutions in China have invested heavily in constructing and accumulating large scale quality educational resources during their long term operation. Generally these remain in information "islands". Resources that each institution builds can be only used by its internal staff or fewer people, resource supply and demand is poorly communicated and resources are not fully and efficiently utilized, which inevitably leads to redundant construction and waste of society's resources. Meanwhile, "high investment and low utilization" raises the cost for learners and also increases the investment risk for resource builders, decreasing the incentive to build high quality resources. This is neither good for educational institutions nor for learners. The above phenomena can be attributed to various factors such as philosophy, technology and funds, but the root cause lies in the lack of a high quality educational resource sharing mechanism able to attract the widespread participation of educational institutions and learners.

The basic way to solve these problems is to change attitudes, acknowledge the product potential of e-learning resources and gradually establish effective channels of transacting and exchanging e-learning resources. Specific measures include creating a membership system and resource sharing application fund. The master center and sub-centers would be equal members of the resource center and each member would pay a certain amount of membership fee every year, which, together with other funds (e.g. endowments, etc.) constitute the resource sharing fund. In principle, every member should also contribute a certain amount of shared resources as member resources. Through the resource center platform, member resources would be open to sub-center members free of charge. Member resource suppliers would receive a sharing fund bonus every year according to their contribution rate (resources provided by the member as a percentage of total member resources) and utilization rate (member resource usage as a percentage of total usage). In addition, a fixed portion of member resources would be converted each year to free resources open to all users in order to encourage the update of member resources and provide free shared educational resources for the whole society.

Besides member resources, the resource center would expand resource sources and allow non-member institutions to provide a large volume of free resources and paid custom resources. Member resources, free resources and custom resources might be interconverted during actual operation (for instance, member resources may become free resources), which would drive the flow of resource users and bring users to those institutions participating in resource sharing (Figure 2).