The Ministry of Education (MOE) and the National Commission of China for UNESCO jointly held the World Digital Education Conference on Feb. 13. Li Yongzhi, director of the China National Academy of Educational Sciences (CNAES), officially released the China Smart Education Bluebook 2022 and the China Smart Education Development Index Report 2022 to both domestic and international audiences.
The Bluebook defines 16 essential elements of smart education along four separate dimensions: environment, instruction, governance, and talent. The report presents an overview of China’s experience in establishing smart education and identifies seven significant concerns and five recommendations for the international community to consider in the future. It regards five aspects of smart education as innovative: its underlying philosophy, organization, teaching paradigm, educational content, and the manner in which it combines physical, social, and digital areas to create educational settings.
According to the report, smart education prioritizes individual development and focuses on facilitating social and economic development. Smart education establishes a tailored lifelong learning system by integrating diverse forms of education, resources, and components. It dismantles traditional barriers to school education and unites families, schools, and society to foster the growth of children as a whole. It stresses the integration of people and technology and encourages the creation of learning communities across disciplines, learning stages, and time. In addition to emphasizing the provision of quality instruction, smart education strives to encourage critical thinking, comprehensive innovation capabilities, and lifetime learning abilities, thereby enhancing the learning experience for students.
The Smart Education Development Index Report investigates the creation of an assessment index system comprising four major indicators and 12 supplementary parameters. In an effort to measure the scope of China’s smart education, it contains three separate studies on basic education, vocational education, and higher education.
In 2022, China launched a national digital education strategy and built the world’s largest repository of educational resources, which has garnered over 58.7 billion visits from over 200 countries. The platform played a crucial role in offering uninterrupted education during the Omicron outbreak, as well as in bridging the digital divide.