This post is connected with IPT 690, a graduate seminar course in Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University.

This week for seminar, Dr. Peter Chan, a graduate of BYU IPT and part-time faculty member gave a little background on the educational system in China as well as talking about some of the opportunities that are available to instructional design students to do projects in China.

In the overview, Dr. Chan did a good job of helping us understand the scale of the Chinese educational system and more importantly, the scale of change within the Chinese economy. The economy is growing rapidly, and will soon overcome the US in terms of size.  Still with this size however, China has a general dissatisfaction towards the education system, and many families are looking toward the United States to find a formal education.  Peter explained that there is prestige still found in these US-based schools.  I have seen the other side of the equation, as US-based universities and community colleges are looking at Chinese students as an additional source of revenue (because they pay out-of-state tuition and cannot receive financial aid).

What I was most interested in was a brief point that Peter made about China beginning to embrace open educational resources and technologies.  I spoke with Peter about this after the meeting, and he discussed how it is still in its infancy, but there are groups in China that are very interested in pursuing OER as a way to support their educational system.   Peter also mentioned that Chinese colleges and universities are looking for instructional designers to help them — maybe this could be the opportunity that I have for living abroad that I have been looking for.