Shaanxi Digital Education Conference was held at the iHarbour Campus of Xi'an Jiaotong University on April 20, 2023. Chairman Hu Jianbo attended the Digital Education Forum and delivered a speech.

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to the Education Department and the conference organizers for giving me this opportunity to share. My original plan is to go on a business trip in the afternoon and my flight is at 12:50 pm. The first expert reports are informative and terrific, but the presentation took a little bit longer than scheduled. The two directors made timely adjustments and canceled the tea break so as to move back the round table, otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to sit here, thank you very much.

Regarding education informatization, I always heard about the experience of Xi'an Jiaotong University and the report of President Zheng Qinghua, which turns out to be profitable for me every time, lifting my understanding to a higher level and expanding my horizon. Just now, I listened carefully to President Zheng Qinghua's speech again, and I could not understand clearly many of the professional and technical contents, and I think the distance between me and the IT expert is still very large.

I can sit here today and present the experience of educational informatization because Xi’an Eurasia University has also made some achievements. Xi’an Eurasia University has been awarded the "National Pilot Excellence Unit in Educational Informatization" for years, and the informatization team from our university has undertaken the preparation of the Annual Development Report of Education Informatization in Shaanxi Province for eight consecutive years. From the perspective of an amateur president, I would like to share some experiences and lessons learned:

The first point is to be clear about one's own position, and the construction of education information technology should start from our own school positioning and development goals. At the cognitive level and in terms of information expertise, we need to learn from Jiaotong University and Xidian University; in terms of concrete practice, we cannot simply imitate and follow the path of large schools because we have different positioning and goals and we have neither the ability nor the financial resources to imitate. We are now at the primary stage while they are at a relatively higher stage of development.

The second point is that we need to attach great importance to the construction of education informatization and digital transformation. When we formulated our "4+4+2" Strategy 15 years ago in 2008, one of the "three strategies and two supports" was informatization. We were able to make it this far because we have been investing in it for 15 years. Later, in 2020, when we made the 14th Five-Year Plan for the university, we thought that our informatization work was almost done and we were ahead in the province, so the university didn't include informatization in our five strategies. After COVID-19, we found that information technology and digitalization were extremely important. Later, we added "digital transformation" and changed them into six strategic priorities.

Thirdly, we need to develop a long-term information technology plan. Ten years ago, MOOC and SPOC were popular in the education sector. The trend moved from PC to mobile, and ChatGPT arose recently, etc. One technology went viral after another without planning and guidance. It can easily become chaotic. So we need to know what our teachers and students really need. It is not that complicated, the basic principle is very simple, but we need the help of experts, ask them to do consultation and planning according to our reality and information development direction, and then we follow the planning path. In the process, we then take a formative strategic management approach and see if we are on the right track in a year or two. So that's my third point, which is to have formative strategic planning.

The fourth one is about action and persistence. This epidemic has proven one thing: what we used to think we couldn't do, we seem to have done well. Because of the epidemic, universities of all types and levels have taken online meetings and other means to get our teaching done online. Basically, we've been pushed into a corner. Therefore, the key to information technology is application-oriented, and it is the most critical thing that teachers and students can simply use information technology. We can try to use public services, instead of having our own system for everything. We don't want to be carried away by the team of technology, but we should do our informatization work closely around learning and teaching in our university. Take action and stick to it.

Last but not the least, we need to utilize the help of external brains and make good use of third-party teams to help us do education informatization work. We cannot rely on ourselves to figure it out, nor can we simply rely on the Party B construction unit to help us do the work of education informatization. Jiaotong University, Xidian University, Northwestern University, Shaanxi Normal University and other institutions have first-class high-level experts in China and also have rich practical experience. I would like to call on experts from these institutions to pay attention to the digital transformation needs of basic education schools and vocational institutions as well as applied universities and provide training and consulting services to help the high-quality development of education informatization in Shaanxi province. Xi’an Eurasia University has recently established the Digital Research Institute, whose mission is to help universities at all levels to do education informatization and digital transformation development, so please feel free to reach out to us if you have any concerns!

Digital transformation is a marathon run, which requires a combination of positioning and goals, great attention from all parties, planning path, action and persistence, and external forces to help the organization achieve its mission and realize long-term sustainable development.

Thank you!

(This article is compiled based on the presentation at Shaanxi Digital Education Conference)