This Day, That Year: Nov 6

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

On Nov 6, 1998, Hunan University became the first college in the country to offer online education. Later it began to teach campus undergraduates online.

Besides Hunan University, Tsinghua University, Beijing Communications University and Zhejiang University were among the first batch in the pilot e-learning project launched by the Ministry of Education.

Tsinghua University enrolled 1,740 internet postgraduate students in business administration, computer technology and civil and business law in 1999.

To provide an internet infrastructure for distance education, authorities began to invest in the construction of the China Education and Research Network in 1994. It marked the beginning of the construction of a high-speed transmission platform for distance education in China.

Thanks to the rapid growth in internet users, online college education has been expanded to 68 universities across the country, according to the ministry.

The number of internet users surged to 830 million last year from 620,000 in 1997.

In 2013, China introduced Massive Online Open Courses, or MOOC for short, which allow people from all over the country to hear lessons simultaneously from any location, as seen in this item from China Daily.

After six years of development, the country now has 15,000 such courses. About 270 million people had participated as of August. Of the users, about 80 million were college students.

More than 200 of the courses developed by 19 Chinese universities have been viewed by people from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and South Korea.

China ranks first in the number of MOOC and viewers in the world.

The Education Ministry also plans to launch a bilingual gateway website of Chinese MOOC this year to connect about 20 websites.