Introduction to Netease Open Classes

On November 1, 2010, NetEase, China's leading web portal, launched the "Global Famous Schools Video Open Class Program", with the first 1,200 episodes of the program available online, including more than 200 episodes with Chinese subtitles. Users can watch open courses from Harvard University and other world-class universities as well as domestic universities online for free.

The first batch of open course videos from Harvard, Oxford, Yale, and other world-renowned universities are available online, covering the fields of humanities, society, arts, finance, etc., with more than 200 episodes with Chinese subtitles.

"This project is completely public welfare," Zhang Rui, deputy editor-in-chief of NetEase, emphasized in a previous interview with the media, "NetEase is hoping to accelerate the flow of information and benefit Chinese netizens. Although video advertising is currently very hot, we will not conduct any advertising and marketing on the open class channel, to maintain the public welfare and purity of the channel".

Netease has already invested hundreds of thousands of yuan in the open class project and plans to continue recruiting domestic and foreign translation talent afterward, providing cost-organized translations and allowing users to watch and download online for free. It is expected that the cost of the first batch of open class videos invested will exceed one million.

Industry senior Internet people said, NetEase in the public service at the same time, is hoping in the website video competition in the red sea to take a differentiated route, through the quality of the building reputation, the use of word of mouth collection of popularity, which and NetEase put forward the "do attitude portal" slogan of the intention is the same.

Gan Ming, NetEase's video director and head of the open class program for prestigious schools, said there have been a number of open classes circulating on sharing sites, but due to language barriers, it's difficult for many users to get a full understanding of the content. So NetEase has been organizing domestic and foreign translation talents to systematically translate selected courses from them since August. We hope that users will be able to learn the new knowledge and thoughts of the world's frontiers without cost and obstacles.

It is reported that the purpose of NetEase's open course translation platform is to uphold the spirit of the Internet: openness, equality, collaboration and sharing, because knowledge has no borders, and it is hoped that all kinds of individuals and organizations at home and abroad who are interested in knowledge sharing and dissemination will join. By paying translators, NetEase is able to scale up and systematize the trend of foreign quality open courses coming to the Chinese Internet. For netizens, there is also an additional video option for self-learning beyond the consumption of film and television dramas and entertainment programs. The scale of investment in NetEase's open class, which it says has invested more than 10 million yuan, is mostly for translation and production costs.

And the first batch of 20 courses on line outside, the subsequent will cooperate with more colleges and universities to launch more courses, and gradually cover the focus of the university's various majors.

Netease Open Class launched the "Khan Academy" program. "Khan Academy is a world-renowned free online classroom, and its founder, Salman Khan, was ranked fourth on Time Magazine's "100 People Who Influenced the World in 2012" list. As the only officially authorized partner of Khan Academy in China, NetEase will launch more basic courses for the 14-18 age group.

Zeng Li, head of NetEase's open course program, said there are many websites doing open courses in China, and NetEase hopes to get involved in the upstream translation and production of open courses in addition to doing a good job of broadcasting and promoting the platform.

NetEase announced on November 9, 2011, that its NetEase Open Class program had officially launched open video classes at Chinese universities, the first large-scale online public courses at domestic universities following the first anniversary of the NetEase Open Class. Internet users can enjoy these courses through the Internet.

The first batch of 20 domestic university courses on NetEase, covering different disciplines such as information technology, culture, architecture, psychology, literature and history, came from more than a dozen famous institutions of higher education in China, including Peking University and Tsinghua University.

The lecturers of the first batch of on-line courses include many famous domestic scholars: such as Wang Yue, China's famous information system expert, academician of both academies and professor of Beijing Institute of Technology; He Jingtang, designer of the China Pavilion at the World Expo, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor of South China University of Technology; and Sun Zhengyu, winner of the first National Teaching Master Teacher Award and professor of Jilin University, are some of the famous scholars. It also contains some courses on traditional Chinese culture, such as "Ancient Chinese Politics and Culture" by Prof. Yan Buk and Prof. Deng Xiaonan from the Department of History of Peking University, and "A Thousand Bright Moons" by Prof. Yu Dan from Beijing Normal University.