(Source: China Education News, Edition 05, May 13, 2024)
■ Facing the torrent of the digital intelligence era, we should neither sit idly by or turn a blind eye, nor should we belittle ourselves, nor should we underestimate the importance of change
■ We should be clear about what AI can do for higher education and what problems we hope to solve with it
■ Educational equity in the digital intelligence era means encouraging schools to make full use of their high-quality resources to empower society, thereby creating new value
A few days ago, a reporter from China Education News conducted an exclusive interview with President Zheng Qinghua, focusing on the understanding and application of artificial intelligence and how to make it an important path to promote the digital transformation and upgrading of universities. After all, it is easier said than done. The road to artificial intelligence empowering higher education requires more actions in addition to the baptism of ideas. The following is his thinking and understanding.
How digital intelligence integration promotes the reform of higher education
The biggest feature of the fourth industrial revolution is intelligence, which combines human intelligence and machine intelligence to make humans more "smart". It can be said that artificial intelligence empowers everyone, rich or poor, and can benefit from it.
It has been less than 70 years since the concept of artificial intelligence was proposed, but we have already deeply felt its impact like a stormy sea. There are no definite answers yet as to where artificial intelligence will lead us. However, we must be clearly aware of the inevitability of artificial intelligence empowerment and its comprehensive, profound and long-term impact on society, economy, culture and other aspects.
First, it is changing the way knowledge is produced. In the past, knowledge was mainly created and produced by humans, but now artificial intelligence also has the ability to produce knowledge, which means that the creation of knowledge is no longer just a "patent" for humans.
Secondly, artificial intelligence is changing the way knowledge is disseminated. If you just want to learn knowledge, going to college may no longer be the only option.
Once again, artificial intelligence is changing the international discourse system. Through big data and algorithms, artificial intelligence can collect and analyze the needs and ideas of various groups of people from all over the world, which is of great significance for studying problems in human society and the direction of technological development.
Finally, artificial intelligence is changing the core aspects of talent training such as admissions, examinations, teaching, and evaluation, and is likely to subvert the traditional w88 casino management model in the future.
Therefore, empowering higher education with artificial intelligence is an important task for universities to both respond to and lead the challenges of artificial intelligence.
Currently, in the field of education, artificial intelligence is triggering the third educational revolution. Education is undergoing major changes across borders, across schools, across borders, the combination of virtual and reality, and the combination of online and offline. At the same time, the development of artificial intelligence technology, especially data-driven research methods, has greatly improved the efficiency and depth of scientific research and promoted the transformation of scientific thinking.
In the intelligent age, data is more important than ever. As a new factor of production, it has become a new driving force to promote social progress and shape a new form of civilization. Currently, big data computing and application are becoming key issues. Only by deeply understanding the connotation and value of data can we make better use of data resources, promote the continuous progress of society, and meet the personalized development needs of individuals.
Last year, many people began to discuss whether artificial intelligence would replace teachers or even subvert the education industry. In my opinion, education is a process full of warmth. It is not only the transfer of knowledge, but more importantly, the interaction between people. The fundamental difference between living organisms and inorganic things is that inorganic things lack consciousness and can only complete tasks mechanically, while the creativity, sociality, and emotion in the education process, especially face-to-face communication, eye contact, and body language, are full of emotions and warmth, which are difficult for machines to copy and imitate.
Talent training requires the establishment of a systematic and chain-like system, especially focusing on the combination of theory and practice. Artificial intelligence has indeed improved the efficiency of acquiring knowledge and the ability to provide personalized services, but the core of education is to promote the all-round development of people, just like the growth of trees, which requires a deep-rooted foundation. We must not deny the role of teachers. On the contrary, we must continue to encourage teachers to transform the traditional teaching-centered model and pay more attention to stimulating students' innovative spirit and creative vitality.
Therefore, although the application of artificial intelligence in education is an inevitable trend, it is unlikely to replace the role of teachers. But teachers who are adept at using AI will quickly outperform those who ignore or resist the trend.
Faced with the torrent of the times, we should neither sit idly by or turn a blind eye, nor should we belittle ourselves, nor should we underestimate the importance of change. We must not only actively embrace change, but also adhere to the essence of education and the all-round development of people.
First understand what to transfer before you can know how to transfer
Aware of the importance of change, before we take action, we need to deepen our understanding of the in-depth interaction between artificial intelligence and education, so as to understand what we want to change.
The first is to change the concept. Understanding and transforming the world are the eternal themes of the development of human society. As a new productive force, artificial intelligence will provide us with new opportunities and challenges through breakthroughs in methodology and tools. The essence of artificial intelligence is to help us better understand the ins and outs of problems and the correlation between data through pre-analysis, thereby improving the scientific nature of decision-making and the effectiveness of execution.
The second is to change the mode. In the field of education, artificial intelligence will create new teaching models. The traditional binary structure of teachers and students will be transformed into a triadic structure of teachers, machines and students. Machines will become intelligent teaching assistants, study companions or mentors, learning and growing together with teachers and students. This will change the traditional teaching, learning and evaluation methods, requiring us to pay more attention to cultivating students' values, innovative thinking and practical abilities.
The third is to change the means. Artificial intelligence-empowered education will create many new scenarios, such as game-based learning, social learning, collaborative learning, autonomous learning, problem-driven learning, and project-based inquiry learning. Artificial intelligence will also create new ways of education, such as creating a more vivid and intuitive learning environment through immersive teaching and AR/VR technology. At the same time, the development of educational knowledge engineering will enable us to transform various educational resources into structured knowledge systems to help students learn more efficiently under the guidance of knowledge maps.
The fourth is to change the ecology. The construction of the artificial intelligence ecosystem is a complex and huge system project, which involves data, algorithms, security, laws, regulations and other aspects, and requires the joint efforts of everyone. In this process, we need to pay attention to how to ensure the "upward development" of artificial intelligence technology and how to prevent data leaks and privacy violations. At the same time, we also need to pay attention to the role of artificial intelligence technology in intellectual property protection. Only in this way can the potential of artificial intelligence technology be fully utilized and promote economic and social development and the progress of human civilization.
In universities, the core of building an overall artificial intelligence ecosystem lies in overcoming key technologies. For functional departments and secondary units, the first thing that needs to be considered is how to introduce artificial intelligence to transform education and work processes. In other words, we should be clear about what AI can do for higher education and what problems we hope to solve with it. For example, the Personnel Office, Undergraduate w88 casino, Graduate w88 casino, etc. all need to consider how to provide personalized services to teachers and students. Specifically, the Human Resources Office needs to consider how to provide teachers with holographic personalized data support, and the undergraduate and graduate schools need to think about how to optimize educational resources and curriculum based on these data.
We can no longer rely on the traditional method of increasing staff to cope with the expansion of teachers and students and the increase in individualized needs. Instead, we need to think about how to use artificial intelligence to improve efficiency and reduce human burden. Whatever machines can do should not be the main job of human beings. We must be good at converting our needs and ideas into artificial intelligence technologies, systems and tools to improve work efficiency.
In terms of promoting artificial intelligence to empower higher education, Tongji University has formulated a series of specific ideas and measures and has gradually implemented them since last year. The overall goal is to create a "smart Tongji" to support the construction of a world-class university with Chinese characteristics. Through the five keys of "strengthening planning, horizontal and vertical integration, solving fragments, one-stop service, and value-added services" and the five paths of "goal guidance, systematic planning, team building, mechanism innovation, and effectiveness as king", we not only give full play to the empowering role of artificial intelligence, but also prevent technology from overriding education, and support the modernization of modern university governance capabilities and system modernization with informatization and intelligence.
Specifically, we need to start from the network level, optimize wired and wireless Internet and w88 casino platforms, and achieve intelligent perception and interconnection within the campus. On this basis, an intelligent platform is created for management services such as teaching, office, and logistics to realize business management, educational resource optimization, and big data analysis of teachers and students' daily behaviors. This will help achieve the integration of humans and machines, intelligent management and personalized services, and support the w88 casino’s five major functions of talent cultivation, scientific research, cultural inheritance, international exchanges and social services.
To achieve this goal, we need to establish a complete system, including balancing various resources, optimizing the governance system, formulating standards and regulations, and paying attention to intellectual property and ethics. Each functional department should refine and apply these principles to specific work based on their own actual conditions, and jointly promote the in-depth application and development of artificial intelligence in various fields of the w88 casino.
Give a specific example of how to generate teacher portraits. Through vertical integration, teacher resumes are formed, and horizontal integration is used to form assessment forms. Finally, all data can be used to draw a holographic portrait for each teacher. However, currently in colleges and universities, various data are scattered in various departments, and there is a lack of coordination, linkage and sharing mechanisms. When you want to obtain certain data, each department needs to report it, which is a cumbersome and inefficient process.
In order to solve this problem, we urgently need to establish a data sharing mechanism and formulate unified standards and specifications. This is the basic project to realize one-stop service. To this end, it is necessary to build a network, cloud, data, computing and physical infrastructure platform for smart campuses to ensure centralized sharing of data across the w88 casino. At the same time, a complete system of standards and specifications must be established, which involves many aspects such as data sharing, identity management, and unified user experience.
How to fully penetrate artificial intelligence in colleges and universities
In recent years, as a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation have accelerated, Tongji University has given new momentum to the development of traditional disciplines with "digital intelligence", comprehensively promoted "artificial intelligence +" in discipline construction, talent training, scientific research, platform construction and other aspects, opened up new tracks, created new advantages, and achieved a series of important progress.
In order to promote the digital transformation of artificial intelligence-empowered universities, the w88 casino has optimized its information management mechanism to ensure that each business department takes the lead in building relevant systems, while the Information Office focuses on solving common problems and providing technical support.
Specifically, the w88 casino proposed "ten projects" for smart campus, including building a professional knowledge map, developing digital teaching materials, establishing a test-order-reading-evaluation-deposit big data system, a big data system for education and teaching quality monitoring, a big data platform for student growth, a big data platform for employment, an integrated platform for teacher development, a big data system for campus space and assets, a digital logistics management service system, and a connection between alumni services and public relations. These tasks will help schools achieve digital transformation and improve education and teaching quality and management efficiency.
Why should we pay attention to starting from basic work?
Take the education and teaching quality monitoring big data system as an example. This system can comprehensively cover all courses, examinations and classrooms in the w88 casino and conduct specific data collection, analysis and evaluation. This marks the transformation of education and teaching quality evaluation in colleges and universities from fuzzy macro vectorization and precision, from partial randomness to comprehensive coverage, from the semester system to normal continuity, and from flood irrigation to precise drip irrigation. This kind of change cannot be achieved simply by adding more supervisors.
In the w88 casino’s Sino-French Center, we also plan to build a smart campus decision-making “cockpit” that can view the operation of various departments in real time and provide strong support for the w88 casino’s decision-making. At the same time, it will also become a platform that connects the world, showing the w88 casino's style through three-dimensional video interaction and other methods.
Achieving the goals is not easy and requires overcoming management issues. At present, some departments still have a sense of self-centeredness and hope that others will provide services but are unwilling to actively cooperate. But I believe that once they taste the "sweetness" of data sharing and collaborative work, they will naturally change their attitude.
We hope that through everyone’s joint efforts, the “Ten Projects” will be implemented before the end of this year and bring positive changes to the w88 casino. This will allow university administrators to have more energy to consider larger and longer-term issues and no longer be entangled in daily affairs.
We must face up to the fact that the current progress in the application of artificial intelligence in the secondary units of the w88 casino is uneven. In order to comprehensively promote the application of artificial intelligence, we have adopted a "1+N" strategy. Among them, "1" refers to theoretical and technological breakthroughs in the ontology of artificial intelligence, which relies on the w88 casino's key laboratories and related disciplines; "N" refers to all other colleges, including traditional disciplines and colleges of humanities and social sciences. The w88 casino encourages all colleges to use artificial intelligence to upgrade and transform the original talent training model, revise course training plans, teaching syllabuses, and experimental and practical training methods, make artificial intelligence a part of general education, penetrate into undergraduate and graduate education, and transform professional courses to integrate AI for Science and other content.
For example, in the field of civil engineering, the intelligent perception robot we developed can crawl on walls to detect cracks and leaks. In the transportation field, we deploy traffic robots that can detect geological subsidence and road surface conditions on highways.
These specific application scenarios require the deans of each college to put forward their needs and make corresponding contributions. They need to clarify how artificial intelligence supports the development of specific disciplines, and what resources, platforms and new application scenarios they can provide for artificial intelligence research. Interdisciplinary cooperation will promote the innovation and development of traditional disciplines and will also enhance the application value of artificial intelligence technology.
In general, our goal is to comprehensively promote the application of artificial intelligence in various fields, promote cross-disciplinary integration, and cultivate innovative talents with practical capabilities.
Exploration always requires someone to take the lead, and it is impossible for all universities to advance at the same time. Tongji University’s current work is not only for its own development, but also to lead the entire education field forward. We are just doing what we have to do at the moment, because if we don't, we will be eliminated by the times.
Education equity in the digital intelligence era means encouraging schools to make full use of their high-quality resources to empower society, thereby creating new value. Behind fairness is personalization. The truth is, not everyone gets the same results from the same high-quality resources. Therefore, true educational equity in the future is to provide personalized services according to each person's needs and interests.
I think, not only Tongji University, but also hope that all functional departments, secondary units and teachers of all universities can maintain an open and enterprising attitude, actively adapt to changes, plan and prepare in advance, advance relevant work with a serious attitude, make good use of "artificial intelligence +", fully empower China's higher education, provide strong support for the development of new productive forces, and make due contributions to accelerating the construction of an educational power.
Author: Zheng Qinghua (Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, President of Tongji University)
