Ubiquitous Learning behind the Great Firewall: Transforming the English Major at Shantou University

Similar to higher education in the USA and elsewhere, higher education in China confronts unprecedented changes in how people acquire, use, create, and share information in a global media environment. Despite considerable cultural, legal, and institutional differences between Chinese higher education and that of the West, reinforced by China's restrictive Internet policies (aka, the Great Firewall), we in China still very much live and work in an era of ubiquitous computing. But also like our counterparts elsewhere, we have yet to realize a general environment of ubiquitous learning, particularly as demarcated by “New Learning: A Charter for Change in Education,” a significant and arguably visionary manifesto by the College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In educating generation digital native, in preparing our students for the challenges of China’s nascent knowledge society, this study discusses the progress being made at one university in China, and explores how our efforts—when successful, and when not—may offer valuable insights and examples for other institutions of higher education dealing with similar issues and challenges.