Intellectual click: Mainland Chinese students join the Mooc revolution

For years mainland students have flocked to top universities overseas for their education, but today greater numbers are turning to the newest education frontier: the internet.

Students are embracing the idea of online learning through access to massive online open courses, or "Mooc platforms", such as edX and Coursera, and one mainland recruitment company is preparing to sink millions of dollars into establishing its own platform.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is also committing some subjects to the Coursera platform, so as not to be left behind in the education race.

Massive open online courses are a recent development in distance education and often use open educational resources available to anyone. Normally, they do not offer academic credits or charge tuition fees.

Probably the first Mooc to appear was in 2011 when Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun put his graduate-level artificial intelligence course online, attracting 160,000 students in more than 190 countries. The following year, several well-financed providers associated with top universities emerged, including Coursera, Udacity, and edX and they are changing the face of Mooc education.

Founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), edX has already attracted some 6,000 mainland students to its free open courses. EdX press officer Dan O'Connell admitted the number was still small because YouTube, which hosts the courses, was blocked on the mainland.