Based on the concept of learning stickiness, this study constructed a model of influencing factors among the elements of online learning content, interaction, incentive, satisfaction, and learning stickiness from Comprehensive Learning Theory. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the interaction and influence effects among the factors. It is found that the content, interaction, and incentive in Comprehensive Learning Theory had a significant positive impact on learning stickiness from the total effect analysis. From the direct effect analysis, the influence of content and interaction on learning stickiness was not substantial, but the influence of incentive and satisfaction on learning stickiness was significant. From the perspective of mediation effect analysis, incentive and satisfaction were critical mediating variables for the influence of content and interaction on learning stickiness. This study put forward suggestions and strategies for online teaching, providing a reference for teachers to carry out online education.

In this paper, we used the platform log data to extract three features (proportion of passive video time, proportion of active video time, and proportion of assignment time) aligning with different learning activities in the Interactive- Constructive-Active-Passive (ICAP) framework, and applied hierarchical clustering to detect student engagement modes. A total of 840 learning rounds were clustered into four categories of engagement: passive (n = 80), active (n = 366),constructive (n = 75) and resting (n = 319). The results showed that there were differences in the performance of the four engagement modes, and three types of learning status were identified based on the sequences of student engagement modes: difficult, balanced and easy. This study indicated that based on the ICAP framework, the online learning platform log data could be used to automatically detect different engagement modes of students, which could provide useful references for online learning analysis and personalized learning.

“Digital transformation of education” is a hot topic of present educational reform and the development tendency of future educational innovation. Digital transformation of education, as a process stressing technology-driven educational innovation and reform, boasts the importance of development in its birth and practice. It is driven jointly by social and cultural transitions, the impetus of technical innovation, the guidance of national policies, and the endogenous development of the education system. The logic of practice of the transformation can be regarded as the behavior choice dominated by value and intentions, and the underlying generation principles in practice comprise the “problem-driven + concept-led” principle, the “system evolution + innovative breakthrough” principle, and the “value assessment + iterative optimization” principle. At present, under the background of constructing the new ecology of a smart society and a high-quality education system, and under the pressure of COVID-19 pandemic, the transformation faces golden development opportunities. Nonetheless, the present transformation practice still has some differences from the expected value orientation. Therefore, it is required to research and develop a mature digital education model or framework, carry out a national digital education preparation campaign, work for pilot schemes for the transformation at all levels and of all kinds, attach importance to theoretical research on education relating to the digital transformation of education, and more actively embrace the new wave of educational reform worldwide.

Under the background of the two-way empowerment of artificial intelligence (AI) and education development, this paper first sorts out the demands for high-quality development of education in China in the new era from the perspectives of educational equity, talent cultivation, and contradiction resolution. Then, it focuses on the vision of AI empowering the high-quality development of education, and points out that AI is spawning new patterns and characteristics from the aspects of students’ learning, teachers’ development, school construction, home-school cooperation, educational governance, educational evaluation, educational equity, etc., which has provided important driving force for the high-quality development of education. Finally, the paper proposes the paths of AI empowering high-quality development of education from the aspects of top-level design, educational reform, construction of intelligent education environment, improvement of intelligence education literacy, cultivation of innovative talent, construction of high-quality education resources, response to ethical risks, etc., to clarify the future direction for the deep integration and development of AI and education.

Based on the related theories and research results of learning behavioral engagement, this study constructed an evaluation framework of learning behavioral engagement in live teaching, which included 24 indicators in three dimensions: compliance with norms, learning participation and social participation. A small-class live English learning for younger students on the ClassIn was taken as a case study program. Five younger students attended this English learning course of 16 lessons totaling 950 minutes. The preset indicators were preliminarily examined based on the teaching records and the recorded course data. Then, experts in the field of educational technology were invited to develop the learning behavioral engagement dimensions and indicator weightings by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process, and to determine the evaluation indicator system for the evaluation of learning behavioral engagement. Finally, based on this framework, the characteristics of learning behavioral engagement of the case course were analyzed, and the influences of students’ individual factors, teaching and environmental factors on learning behavioral engagement in live teaching were investigated.

Digital transformation has become a crucial part in the modernization of vocational education, gaining considerable attention. Presently, guided by relevant national policies and projects, digital transformation in vocational education has yielded remarkable outcomes, specifically in digital supporting conditions, innovative teaching and learning methods, digital teaching proficiency, digital governance frameworks and models, and digital systems and mechanisms. Nevertheless, digital transformation in vocational education is challenged by a multitude of demands. They include advancing students’ learning capability and initiative, further integrating information technology into teaching, updating and upgrading the essence and level of digital teaching proficiency, raising data-driven management and service abilities, leveling up digital supporting conditions, and improving digital systems and mechanisms. Thus, during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, a significant upgrade in digital vocational education should be made by enhancing the strategic comprehension and developmental stance of digital transformation, adopting a rational view on digital transformation, and elucidating the ideas and strategies pertaining to digital transformation.

The 5G communication technology serving a wide range of vertical industries is maturing, which provides a possible boost for the development of smart education and lays a foundation for solving the principal contradiction in current education. With the characteristics of ultra-high speed, low latency, low energy consumption, massive network capacity, and high reliability, the 5G technology is applied with other technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), big data, and blockchain to promote the application upgrading of intelligent education technology. This paper analyzes the intelligent education technology and its eight typical applications in the 5G era, which include smart safe campus, integrated learning spaces, synchronous cyber classrooms, teachers’ professional development, robot learning partners, mobile and ubiquitous learning, virtual simulation training, and smart e-textbooks. Then, it discusses how intelligent education technology promotes changes in the modes of learning and teaching in the 5G era from three dimensions: individual learning, collaborative group learning, and classroom-based collective teaching. At last, the framework of smart education in the 5G era is proposed from the perspectives of intelligent education technology and its typical applications, changes in learning and teaching, and the new ecosystem of smart education.

Discussion is a common and important learning process. Involvement of a virtual agent can provide adaptive support for the discussion process. Argumentative knowledge construction is beneficial to learners’ acquisition of knowledge,but the effectiveness of argumentative scaffolding in existing studies is not consistent. Based on an intelligent discussion system, a total of 47 undergraduate students took part in the experiment and they were assigned to three different conditions: content-related plus content-independent scaffolding condition, content-related scaffolding condition, and the control condition. Under the content-related and content-independent scaffolding condition, the computer agent provided an idea from semantically different categories (content-related scaffolding) according to the automatic categorization of the current contributions, and further inquired the participants about their attitudes and reasons (content-independent scaffolding). Under the condition of content-related scaffolding condition, the virtual agent only provided semantically different viewpoints. Under the control condition, the subjects expressed their opinion independently without the participation of the virtual agent. Findings revealed that compared with the control group, when the virtual agent provided semantically different ideas (content-related scaffolding), the discussion breadth (number of categories) was improved and the subjects felt that they had a more comprehensive understanding of the problem. Compared with the content-related scaffolding condition, when the virtual agent provided semantically different ideas and further asked about the attitudes and reasons, the subjects expressed more agreement with these views, but mentioned fewer categories during the discussion. This study suggests that the content-related scaffolding can facilitate the cognitive processing effect relevant to the topic of discussion. When the content independent scaffolding is added, it can promote the argumentative processing, but may have a negative effect on the cognitive processing related to the topic discussed.

In education, digitalization has become a pivotal force to promote educational reform in the new era, featuring demand-driven development of digital transformation in education. Digital transformation in higher education aims to reshape its new capabilities based on next-generation digital technologies concerning the quality of development of higher education. As per the scope of services and composition of responsible subjects like personnel, digital transformation in higher education should focus on three key areas: talent development, scientific research, as well as management and services. In addition, digital transformation should be structured based on several types of content: essential data, environments, operational functions, organizational structure, and systems. Moreover, paths of guarantee, action, and operation should be taken concurrently to facilitate digital transformation in higher education.

The eye-tracking technology was used in this study to investigate the effects of embedded questions and feedback in instructional videos on learning performance and attention allocation and whether an expertise reversal effect existed. The experiment involved 49 learners with high-level prior knowledge and 45 ones with low-level prior knowledge from a university. Meanwhile, they learned instructional videos with no embedded feedback, embedded questions without feedback and embedded questions with feedback. Findings from the experiment showed that the instructional videos with embedded questions but without feedback not only improved the participants’ attention but also enhanced their learning performance. Furthermore, there was an expertise reversal effect on the learning performance whereby instructional videos with embedded questions but without feedback improved the learning performance of learners with low-level prior knowledge, but not those with high-level prior knowledge.

Using log data of 823 university students collected in two settings: their online learning setting and daily life setting (using campus ID cards for consumption purposes and book-borrowing in the university library), this study created indicators for online learning behavior, early-rising behavior, book-borrowing behavior and learning performance prediction. Five machine learning models were employed to analyze learning performance prediction, with the additional use of Boosting and Bagging to improve the accuracy of the prediction model. The predictability of the proposed model was also compared with that of both the Artificial Neural Network model and the Deep Neural Network model. At the same time, a classification rule set was established by combining decision tree and rule model, and a learning behavior diagnosis model combining decision tree and deep neural network was constructed. Findings showed that multi-scenario behavior performance indicators had strong predictive capabilities while the Deep Neural Network model had the highest prediction accuracy (82%) but was most time-consuming. The model based on the rule set is highly accurate, readable and operable and may be conducive to making accurate teaching interventions and resource recommendations.

The high-quality development of education and a strong education system must be materialized through digital transformation in education. Smart education is the significant measure of this transformation that enjoys key features like cultivating students foremost, scenario perception, data-driven approach, and man-machine collaboration. Amid digital transformation in education, smart education can be generated in two approaches. One involves creating a smart learning environment through constructing an education private network, an education big data center, an integrated education cloud platform, and a smart campus. The other one is to empower core application scenarios like constructing educational resources, innovating teaching modes, reforming the educational evaluation system, improving the information competence of educators and students, and enabling intelligent education governance, which constitutes a basis for redesigning the educational process to support a high quality education system.

At present, intelligent digital technology is irreversibly influencing all levels of the education field. The construction of an education system serving lifelong learning has also become an essential field of digital transformation. In the face of the impact of marketization, aging, and networking, as well as the update and iteration of intelligent digital technology, the construction of the lifelong learning system not only needs to realize the transformation with the help of digital technology but also needs to clarify the internal correlation of transformation goals, computing power support, multiple collaboration, and learning evaluation from the framework structure. At the same time, it is necessary to realize that the penetration of technology into lifelong learning may cause the misunderstanding of technology supremacy and the trap of tool rationality. Therefore, technological empowerment and enablement can accelerate the digital transformation of the lifelong learning system and coordinate with community education, elderly education, vocational education, higher education, and other fields to construct an integrated environment. Additionally, being critical issues requiring attention from society, they are also vital ways to overcome the above dis advantages, promote interactions between communities, governments, and professional education organizations, and improve the digital and intelligent learning environment.

Digital educational resources have become essential elements of modern educational public services. China’s national program on new educational infrastructure construction has proposed to take new infrastructure construction of digital educational resources as one of the critical tasks. This paper aims to provide a theoretical basis for advancing the reform and development of digital educational resources in the new era. It classifies the current development and realistic challenges of China’s digital educational resources, and summaries and interprets the directions of the three construction projects of new type resources and tools, the resource supply system, and the resource supervisory system. It depicts the prospect of digital educational resource construction in the intelligent era in the combination of the strategic layout of the policies on new educational infrastructure construction. It also discusses such key technologies supporting new infrastructure construction of digital educational resources as multimodal learning analytics, disciplinary knowledge graphs, machine learning, and blockchain. It finally proposes a specific development path for new infrastructure construction of digital educational resources.

The educational practice of pre-service teachers is an essential part of teacher training. As an important form of educational practice, volunteer teaching can effectively improve the quality of teacher training and bridge the serving of basic education. Upon the literature review on existing volunteer teaching models, this paper develops a teaching community of teachers under “Internet Plus” and the prototype of a “relay” volunteer teaching model towards the integrated design of training undergraduate pre-teachers and improving the educational quality of small rural schools. The sound “relay” volunteer teaching model has been formed upon revisions around checking its completeness, optimizing its operability, and enhancing its stability using the design-based research paradigm according to the research path of “planning-application-reflection-improvement.” The practice has indicated positive effects of the new model in promoting the academic development of students in small rural schools, enhancing the classroom teaching competency of rural teachers, and improving the professionalism of pre-service teachers. The quality and efficiency of the new model can be improved through initiatives such as providing timely and efficient technical support, establishing a favorable and harmonious relationship between teachers and students, adopting guidance with double-qualified instructors for instant companionship, and implementing flexible incentives and restraints.

Digital and smart education has become the new orientation of educational reform. Further promoting the application of the pilot Smart Education of China platform is one of the effective means to implement the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Informatization, an essential deployment of China’s strategic decision on digital education and a pivotal move to stimulate the construction of digital China. With the Smart Education of China as the research object and based on its strategic superiority and connotation of construction, the paper analyzes the current status and development of the construction and application of smart education platforms and resources, explores the patterns and methods of provincial promotion with Jiangsu Province as an example, and puts forth countermeasures and suggestions in terms of platform interconnection, resources construction, innovation mechanism, digital transformation, and safety specification. This paper aims to provide reference and experience for the provincial promotion, application, and practice of the Smart Education of China. It also targets at facilitating the interconnected promotion and innovative application in different places, establishing the “extensively accessible” smart resource public service system at the country, province, city, county, and school levels .

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology and the demand for general-subject teaching give birth to general-subject AI teacher-led courses. In this study, 79 fourth-grade pupils from two classes in a primary school in Guangzhou City are selected as the samples. The research methods of interview, classroom observation, and questionnaire survey are used to explore the effects of the AI general- subject teacher on pupils’ learning effectiveness based on the framework of anthropomorphic learning process theory. The results show that the AI general-subject teacher can significantly enhance pupils’ learning motivation (including intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation), increase pupils’ learning engagement (including behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement, and emotional engagement), and improve pupils’ learning outcomes (including knowledge and skills, process and method, emotional attitude and values). The findings confirm the important role of the AI general-subject teacher as the main instructor to promote pupils’ efficient learning and provide a significant reference for solving the shortage problem of excellent teachers and reducing the burden on teachers.

With the adoption of competency reconstructing path of functional analysis in the organizational behavior theory, and the consideration of the core mission and attributes of educational organizations plus the urgency for digital transformation, this paper concludes four pillar competencies for teachers: curriculum development and teaching competency, human–computer collaboration competency, effective moral education competency, and self-growth competency. From the perspective of supporting the digital transformation in education, curriculum development and teaching competency is the premise and guarantee of “learning-centered”; and human–computer collaboration competency is the transformation direction of teachers’ information and communications technology capabilities in smart environments; effective moral education competency determines the primary role of teachers in the process of digital transformation; and self-growth competency is the purpose and means of digital existence. Teacher education needs to face up to the current problems in teacher capacity development and reshape teacher education around the core competencies required by digital transformation.

During the current transformative development of postgraduate education, empowering the high-quality development of postgraduate education with digital technology is a critical, popular, and difficult challenge. It is also an inevitable trend for its future transformative development. This paper employs the technology, organization, and environment (TOE) framework to examine the logic reasoning of digital technology empowering the high-quality development of postgraduate education by technology, organization, and environment. Its key features include a shift in postgraduate education organization from “bounded” to “unbounded,” a move from uniform curriculum standards to personalized customization of teaching, a transition from following the industry to leading it in discipline construction, and a change in governance from a “vertical” to “grid” approach. With the empowerment of digital technology, it is essential to build a consensus on digital philosophy, train digital talent, implement digital governance, and innovate digital evaluuation for the high-quality development of postgraduate education.

Under the background of rapid development of “digital China,” digital economy, and information technology, how to promote digital transformation in education is an important issue in education. Basic education is in urgent need of guidance for the paths to digital transformation. The paper analyzes the main connotation of digital transformation in education, classifies and summarizes the effects and problems of the exploration and practice of the national information based teaching experimental areas. On this basis, the paper brings forth the path of digital transformation with continuous iteration as the core concept: Basic education organizations should make clear of the objectives of education development, choose and determine specific paths and measures in terms of the construction of the institutional system and digital capabilities according to their own realities, and promote their implementation. After the implementation for a period, these organizations should, according to the objectives of their work, research and judge the effectiveness of the paths, promptly adjust the paths and measures, and continuously promote their implementation. Through continuous iteration and optimization, basic education organizations will effectively accelerate the process of digital transformation in education and incessantly march toward the objectives of educational work. Finally, the paper, through a case study of the administrative departments of basic education, proposes specific suggestions for stepping up high-quality development of basic education

The reform of rural teacher team building has entered the deep-water zone where tough challenges must be met in the new era. In order to adapt to the new situation and cope with the new challenges, the national training of K-12 teachers in China should set up the concept of high-quality products, summarize the experience of the grass-roots level, aim at the prominent problems, give full play to the exemplary and leading role of the National Training Plan, and promote the comprehensive improvement of the quality and efficiency of teacher training. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the national training of K-12 teachers in China has achieved gratifying results, as well as considerable problems in the implementation of the National Training Plan. On the basis of sorting out the progress of the national training for K-12 teachers in the new era, this paper puts forward development strategies.

Based on the analysis of the digital foundation and transformation demands of teacher development, the paper proposes a logical architecture of teachers’ digital learning from the perspective of 70- 20-10 model for learning and development, including self-learning based on platform resources (10%), blended learning based on collaborative support (20%), and embedded learning based on work scenarios (70%). Then, a pyramid model of evaluation and governance for teacher development needs that is compatible with the three types of learning paradigms is proposed, i.e., focusing on using teacher portraits to evaluate learning behaviors, using skills certification to evaluate knowledge and competencies, and focusing on ethics to promote practical wisdom. Finally, to support the transformation of learning paradigms plus evaluation and governance, this paper proposes an action architecture of service upgrading for digital transformation in teacher development, namely, creating a multi-level coherent online learning architecture for platformization, creating a seamless learning space with multi dimensional integration for ecologization, and leading the transformation from just-in-time learning to just-in-need practice for practicalization, ultimately realizing a leap of teachers’ practical wisdom.

Rural teachers are a weak part of China’s teacher team. Over ten years, China has been continuously making up deficiencies in its policy, with the focus first on rural teachers, teachers of village schools and teaching sites, then further on the rural teachers in the contiguous poverty-stricken areas, national-level poor counties, and finally on teachers of areas of extreme poverty like the “three regions” and “three prefectures.” The construction of the rural teacher policy system has been continuously strengthened by refining supplement, enhancing security, optimizing management, and improving quality, which has effectively helped with the problem of “teachers are unwilling to teach, to stay, or to teach well in rural areas,” and laid a solid foundation for improving the quality of rural teachers and narrowing the gap between urban and rural education. However, there are still deficiencies in the policies concerning rural teachers. Further investigation and monitoring are needed to consolidate the foundation for policy improvement research and reflect the rural point of view in policy making.

Based on the identity theory and the sociological institutionalism theory, this study establishes a triple identity analysis framework and describes the interaction pattern and internal logic between the internal identity cognition and the external identity expectation of rural-oriented pre-service teachers through the study of educational ethnography. It is found that while they form a dominant identity in the interaction with policies, they are also endowed with the identity “privilege” and the energized learning motivation, but there are mutual restrictions between policies’ entitlement and empowerment. In the interaction with social norms, they exchange with the policies reciprocally due to the torture of moral obligation, and then consciously undertake the responsibilities of their identity, but ego and publicity still conflict with each other in the underlying logic. In the interaction with their ego, they gradually reconcile with themselves and reshape their identity after experiencing identity rejection under the stigmatization cognition. Then, in the process of habitualization and institutionalization of identity, they adopt two different strategies: passive compromise and active adjustment.

With the advantages of real time analysis and visual evaluation results, intelligent technology-enabled teaching behavior evaluation has gradually become a powerful means to help teachers adjust teaching behaviors and improve teaching quality. However, at present, the evaluation of intelligent teachers’ behaviors is still in the preliminary exploration stage, and the application research is not deep enough. This paper analyzes the application of intelligent technology in the evaluation of teachers’ classroom teaching behaviors from the perspectives of evaluation data, methods, and results. Voice print recognition technology is used to recognize the teachers’ identities and track the speech in the classroom videos, and the videos are segmented. Then, the evaluation framework of teachers’ classroom teaching behaviors is constructed using three dimensions of emotion, posture, and position preference. Finally, evaluation results are presented to teachers in a more intuitive and easy to-understand visual way, to help teachers reflect on teaching. This paper aims to promote the transformation of teachers’ classroom teaching behavior evaluation toward an intelligent, efficient, and sustainable direction through current research.

In the context of the highly demanding trend of equitable and quality education, digital technology has outlined a blueprint for sharing resources across spatial and temporal boundaries and learner differences. The hybrid classroom implemented on university campuses during the pandemic demonstrates the tremendous shaping power of digital technology on teaching and learning across different groups, time, and space. This study investigates two types of learners, Clone Classroom and Global Hybrid Classroom at Tsinghua University, and finds that intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional dimensions of classroom climate all significantly affect learners’ learning outcomes. However, the influences at the three dimensions differ in degree, with interpersonal factors outweighing institutional factors and institutional factors outweighing individual factors. Furthermore, in individual factors, information literacy and tech-assisted support in institutional factors have the weakest impact on learning outcomes; institutional factors mediate individual and interpersonal factors influencing higher order cognition development. To avoid the pitfalls of techno-centrism, this study suggests promoting an insight of technology for humanity and embedding technology into teaching to better empower teacher development and student learning experience.

This paper analyzes the performance of China’s anti-bullying efforts with the data on school bullying in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 and PISA 2018. It is found that China has fully demonstrated its high performance in anti-bullying actions with all three key performance indicators dropping dramatically, namely the prevalence of bullying, the index of exposure to bullying, and the percentage of frequently bullied students. Further, from the perspectives of personal characteristics and school features, two rounds of PISA data are adopted to make the longitudinal diachronic comparison and the cross-national horizontal comparison, followed by the analysis of the occurrence and development patterns of school bullying. Five suggestions are put forward for the deployment of China’s anti-bullying action plan.

In recent years, China has been issuing artificial intelligence (AI) education policies to promote the deep integration between AI and education. Setting AI courses at the basic education phase can cultivate students’ AI literacy and enhance the country’s science and technology competitiveness in the future. However, due to shortages of AI teachers and inadequate conditions for practice, the current AI courses in primary and secondary schools are not enough in effectiveness. In light of current problems, this study, based on the foundation of university-enterprise cooperation, integrates the “competition and education” mechanism into informal AI course design and practice. Using a design-based research paradigm, the study proposes the design framework from four dimensions: goals, themes and content, methods and steps, and evaluation, and then further refines the framework through two rounds of iterations, to provide a reference for the development and practice of AI courses.

The purpose of this study is to systematically showcase and evaluate how students’, schools’, and countries’ Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development levels influence students’ digital reading literacy by using the data of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 and the multi-level model approach. It is found that the ICT development at each level has a significant positive effect on students’ digital reading literacy, and there is a significant interactive moderating effect between different levels. The gap in ICT development levels between the countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and developed economies has a “Matthew effect” in widening the digital reading literacy gap in the short term, but in the long run, the faster growth of the countries participating in BRI in ICT development levels will narrow the gap and alleviate the effect. China should make use of its advantages in ICT development to engage in global education governance, facilitate the co-development in both the ICT development level and the digital reading literacy for the countries participating in BRI, and contribute to the development of global education by opening up a new way of development.