Construction and Discussion of LIS Experimental Teaching Center in China

The paper first introduces the background of Martin Trow's theory of how to develop mass higher education and then brings up the necessity of Chinese experimental teaching reform. It introduces the current situation of the construction of the Basic Courses Experimental Teaching Center (BCETC) in China. And taking the practice of Wuhan University's library and information science (LIS) experimental teaching center construction as an example, the paper also discusses the implementation of this systematic project, focusing on two aspects: a new system of LIS experimental teaching and information platform construction. The paper concludes by recommending that, for a successful LIS National Basic Courses Experiment Teaching Demonstration Center (NBCETDC), it is necessary to transform our educational ideology, strengthen our innovation and software construction, and set up a more beneficial teaching environment for innovation cultivation. Introduction After his research on the development of higher education in America, the well-known American educational sociologist Martin Trow1 argued that: higher education systems that enrolled up to 15 percent of the college-age population were best described as elite systems; systems that enrolled between 15 and 40 percent of the age group were mass systems; and those that enrolled more than 40 percent were universal systems. This theory has drawn widespread attention all over the world, and many countries have attempted accelerating the development of higher education and stepping into the mass phase as soon as possible. By 2006, when the gross enrollment ratio reached 21 %,2 Chinese higher education stepped into mass education phase. Since this criterion is based on American higher education experiences, it may not apply in all cases, especially in developing countries. However, Trow has addressed this. He argued that the theory of development phases is only a generalization following from his observation of higher education changes in modern industrial society. As for each country, development and change of its higher education should be considered as the reflection of its unique history, society, economy, culture and politics. For example, in different social backgrounds of different countries, the changes of higher education scale, students' social roles, their learning motivation, and course and teaching characteristics may vary in their chronological order: sometimes learning motivation transformation can take place ahead of curricular reform.3 Therefore, when Trow, using his mass education theory, tried to give a view of the course of higher education massification in European countries, deviation was inevitable. And that led to Trow's revision of his perspective. As a country whose development was relatively late and was impelled by external factors, China is exploring its own way of developing higher education. Thus we don't necessarily have to judge the massification course of Chinese higher education strictly conforming to the traditional criterion (15%). Although many aspects of Chinese higher education (e.g. gross enrollment ratio, educational modal diversity, admission and management, curriculum organization, etc.) have shown some characteristics of massification, its development follows a radical path and lacks sufficient resource preparation, which makes lab construction far from the mass higher education standard. In recent years, the Ministry of Education has successively implemented evaluations of the basic curricula in teaching laboratories,4 state key laboratories,3 and at the undergraduate teaching level.6 These evaluations have promoted the construction of university laboratories and effectively supervised and assessed the training of students' practice and creative abilities. Having fully understood the responsibility and structure of mass higher education and the national conditions in China, the Ministry of Education also launched the construction and review of the National Basic Courses Experiment Teaching Demonstration Center (NBCETDC )7 in time, which has propelled Chinese experimental teaching reform. …