With the advance of web-based and network-driven E-Learning, more and more instructions are conducted via Internet, and lots of learning resources are distributing all over the country through network and satellite communication channels. Thousands of educational resource databases describing a diverse variety of resources have been deployed, though, without interoperability with one another. A large number of resource providers and software enterprises are building their own courseware authoring tools and even resource databases, but performance and extensibility with respect to data format and API still leave a lot to be desired. Web-based E-Learning applications are currently still college-limited or district-limited, since few portability and interoperability issues are taken into account at the stage of design and development, not to mention after their being widely used. Hence, the E-Learning application market has been chaotic and rather resource-costly. Hundreds of databases and applications are redesigned and rebuilt simply because they are NOT, in view of E-Learning technology, portable and interoperable.

To make CBT courseware, educational resources and E-Learning applications by different manufacturers portable and interoperable, to obviate redesign and rebuilding of applications when they are to be deployed across many colleges or districts, to make resource databases properly constructed so that different educators and learners can find relevant learning resources more quickly and effectively, and, last but not the least, to keep up the pace of international learning technology standards, some standards or specifications relating to description of educational resources, the behavior of CBT courseware and the ability and extensibility of E-Learning applications are expected, this is what the Chinese E-Learning Technology Standard are for.