Pompeu Fabra University has opened registrations for the MOOC " The European discovery of China " on FutureLearn, the online courses platform created by the Open University which has the support of the British Library, the British Council, the British Film Institute and the BBC.

Thus, UPF becomes the first Spanish institution to offer courses on this platform and one of the non-British pioneers. Since its inception, fifteen months ago, FutureLearn has registered more than one million students from 190 different countries.

The course, organized by Dolors Folch , emeritus lecturer of Chinese History at UPF, has a duration of eight weeks and is expected to start on 28 September. Its aim is to place the history of China and of Europe in a global context in order to understand the origins and the persistence of stereotypes about the country that still exist in Europe.

The backdrop of this initiative is the development of the Chinese world between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries and its relationship with Europe in the Renaissance and Baroque. The protagonists are the merchants, missionaries and travellers that formed an image of China during these centuries through relationships that responded to the concerns of those who wrote about them.

The course will analyse the different stages of Chinese history in detail -the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties- to place the travellers' observations on the backdrop of real Chinese society. In addition, students will study how the medieval, Renaissance and Baroque vision regarded the other new world that was taking shape on the European intellectual horizon.

MOOC teaser " The European discovery of China"

An innovative and collaborative platform

The main interest of FutureLearn, which carefully selects its partner institutions, is the integration of innovative storytelling tools applied to teaching and students' collaborative participation, as well as using the resources of the British national library and the BBC.

It is a pioneer platform in the use of narration and social learning applied to education which will help boost the international reach of the University's MOOC courses and develop joint projects with other institutions.

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