The Practice and Prospect of Distance Learning in Tsinghua University

Mankind is marching into a new century characterized by an information society. Conventional education methods are faced with severe challenges. By using the latest technological achievements and new concepts in distance education to establish a virtual university, which meets needs of engineers and managers to obtain all different knowledge, is the only way to construct a lifelong education system and achieve an environment for learning society.
The modern distance education is a new kind of models of education that takes the computer network and satellite communication technologies as its basis and multimedia technology as its means. It merges information technology into education and has been paid more attention in the field of education all over world. It will definitely produce a great impact and changes on education. Meanwhile, it will promote the development of information industry and drives the development of economics.
Tsinghua University is the first university which carried out the modern distance education among conventional universities all over China, and great progress has been made since the end of 1997 when the University just commenced on the project of distance education. Through the practice, we have gained some valuable experiences and performed useful exploration for the development of the distance education and relevant policy formulating in our country.

Review
In February 1996, President Wang Dazhong of Tsinghua University put forward the idea that Tsinghua University should lead in launching modern distance education programs in China. The University Council approved the project at the same year. The construction of the distance education system in Tsinghua University commenced in June 1997 and completed the preliminary phase in September. Mr. Kuang-piu Chao, a patriot from Hong Kong Novel Group Corporation donated 150million US$ for the construction of the system that gave the full support for the smooth construction of the system. On November 20, 1997, Vice Premier of China Li Langqing visited Tsinghua University. When inspecting the distance education program, he affirmed the achievements of distance education in Tsinghua University fully and made important instructions on China’s development of modern distance education. He urged us to make more contribution in cultivating more high talents by sharing the excellent educational resources of Tsinghua University with the people all over China, especially in remote border provinces and minority nationality regions. In the spring of 1998, Vice Ministers of the Ministry of Education of China Wei Yu and Zhou Yuanqing both visited the system on distance learning expressing their kind concern and support. Many leaders from other provinces, cities and autonomous regions visited the program and gave us many useful suggestions. The distance education has been made encouraging progress and will be further improved under the guidance and support of the State

Council, Ministry of Education, and so on.

Guiding ideology
Tsinghua University is one of four universities that the Ministry of Education of China approved to start nationwide pilot experiments on modern distance education. We follow the guiding principles that the Ministry of Education has put forward for the development of modern distance education in our country, that is, Overall Planning, Advancing by demand, Broadening Opening to the world and Improving Quality.
We should participate and push forward the national project of distance education by making full use of dominant disciplines, technology, courses, teachers and administration of the University, so as to enhance the University’s function of services to the society and promote the progress of constructing Tsinghua University as a first-class university internationally.

Various experiments on the methods of interactive distance teaching
In China, now the economic and technology development in different regions is quite uneven, and information infrastructure in different regions is quite uneven. In large cities and coastal areas, Internet access is popular, but in the mid west part, there may be only local area network, local cable TV network, or even simple TV reception facilities. Under this Chinese context, our distance education adopts an integrated technical approach. We use satellite, computer network and cable TV, and these three technologies complement each other. That makes us can transmit the teaching program to all the regions in China.
l At the beginning, the teaching programs broadcasted by the university are transmitted to remote sites using a band width of 4M of KU band Asia-II communications Satellite, offering interactions between instructors and students in both real time and non-real time manners.
l With the development of network infrastructure, more and more web-based courses will put on CERNET and CHINANET. We have offered the courses in Beijing through Beijing Education and Sci-Tech Information Network (BEST INFOR) with ATM 155M bandwidth. In particular, Tsinghua Web School has been established this year. This semester three courses are offered only through web, and more than 20 courses are offered through satellite and web simultaneously. The establishment of Tsinghua Web School has provided the students of distance learning more convenience, breaking through the limitation of time and space. Meanwhile, the administration of educational affairs using network computer has been realized.
l The number of cable TV users is exceed to 8,000million in our country, it costs lower and is convenient for student to study at home. At present, some remote sites, e.g. Xiamen City, have used the cable TV to conduct the distance education.
The above three network platforms have same transmitting protocol of TCP/IP.
l Real time interaction is realized by constructing two-way virtual classrooms using VSAT sites and /or conducting full bi-

directional interactive discussion and questioning and answering using exiting PSTN or ISDN-based video conference system. For VSAT system, the transmitting quality is good but the facilities costs are very high, and it takes up the band of satellite. So it is not impossible to establish many VSAT sites. For ISDN videoconference system, the transmitting quality is good and the facilities costs are not very high, so there are many remote sites to adopt ISDN as interactive means. But not all region in China are ISDN accessible. For Video-phone and Desktop video-conference system, the costs are low but quality is poor, so the system are seldom used now.

Off-Campus Sites Construction
The Tsinghua Distance Education has now more than 90 off-campus sites with a wide coverage all over China. The establishment of remote sites is mostly done in collaboration with four kinds of organizations, as following:
l State -owned large-and-medium-sized enterprises, e.g., Iron and Steel Firm, Laiwu, Shandong; Qilu Petrochemicals, Shandong; The First Automobile Works, Changchun, Jilin; Daqing Petrochemicals, and so on.
l Universities, colleges and schools at different levels, e.g. Yunnan University, Jiangnan college, Sichuan Radio and TV University, zhejiang Radio and TV University, and so on
l Government agencies, e.g. Bureau of Science and Technology, Nanhai, Guangdong; Association for Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang, Hebei; and so on.
l Scientific and technological research institutions, e.g., 014 Base, China Aerospace Corporation, and so on.
On the basis of the instructions of vice premier Li Lanqing, we pay attention to develop the remote sites at western regions, up to now, we have established 18 off-campus sites at the western regions including Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province, Guangxi Province, Yunnan Province, Ninxia Province, Shaanxi Province, and so on.

Types of courses
The distance education in