The e-learning surge with its free, open online courses is spreading more and more throughout the Middle Kingdom. CeBIT exhibitor Hasso Plattner Institute (https://hpi.de) looks forward to presenting visitors from its partner country China its new Chinese educational platform. The Chinese platform is an offshoot of the social education platform www.openHPI.de, which began in 2012 initially for German- and English-speaking users. Interactive courses on current information technology topics are offered. Now they are also available for every Chinese speaker to learn with – anytime and anywhere. A course on the technologies of the World Wide Web is running during CeBIT. All learning materials such as lectures, self-tests, homework and exams are offered in Chinese, with Chinese subtitles used in the English instructional videos. To date, HPI founder Prof. Hasso Plattner, co-founder and chairman of the software giant SAP, and HPI director Prof. Christoph Meinel have conducted courses on the platform – two on the revolutionary new main memory database technology known as In-Memory Data Management and one on Internet technology
Hasso Plattner Institute, with its online courses that are open to everyone free of charge, is not only a pioneer in Germany but also in the People’s Republic of China. All positive experiences that HPI has made worldwide since the introduction of its “Massive Open Online Courses” (MOOC) in 2012 can now also benefit interested parties in China. The opnHPI.cn servers are at Guofu Data Cloud Computing in Shanghai, where SAP Labs China is responsible for the support of Chinese participants. Chinese online learners in all parts of the country are now offered better technical quality with www.openHPI.cn than if they access the openHPI server in Germany. “I’m sure that our successfully functioning model will generate strong momentum for the offer of online courses in this populous country,” said HPI director Prof. Christoph Meinel. Currently, Meinel is assessing the possibility of bringing the United Nations into the action. The UN wants to create a large educational portal based in Shanghai.
