CORE was established in November 2003 following an MIT OpenCourseWare Conference in Beijing.
CORE was a consortium of universities that began with 26 IET Educational Foundation member universities and 44 China Radio and TV Universities, with a total enrollment of 5 million students. It aimed to provide Chinese universities with free and easy access to global open educational resources and provided a framework for Chinese-speaking universities to participate in the shared global network of advanced courseware with MIT and other leading universities. .