BEIJING, April 28 -- China's Ministry of Education issued a document supporting further application of online open courses in college education on Tuesday.

Colleges have been encouraged to adopt a teaching mode combining the increasingly popular Massive Open Online Course with traditional methods, the ministry said in the concise document.

Chinese colleges should develop their own high-quality open courses and promote the courses abroad. Meanwhile, they should also introduce more excellent foreign open course projects, especially those on natural sciences, engineering and technology, according to the document.

Along with the promotion of online teaching, colleges should also change their evaluation system for students and the learning of online courses should be included in the students' academic credit, the ministry said.