The digital transformation of vocational education: Experience and reflections of Shenzhen Polytechnic University

Abstract

Promoting digital transformation is a vital change to achieve the high-quality development of vocational education and help build China into a leading country in education. Shenzhen Polytechnic University (SZPU) promotes digital transformation from the perspectives of critical layout, operational order, and infrastructure development. SZPU emphasizes the leading role of “humans” in digital transformation by strengthening the digital empowerment of administrators, teachers, and students and highlights the central position of digital teaching transformation from aspects such as teaching concepts and models, curricula and resources, teaching methods and means, and teaching management and evaluation. Engaged in the research and development (R & D) of digital technology, digital technology applications, and digital social services, SZPU is devoted to mutual facilitation between R & D services and digital transformation. Building platforms, promoting the “going global” of vocational education, and creating digital practical teaching brands make international exchanges and cooperation an essential extension of the digital transformation of vocational education. The digital transformation of vocational education is a “progressive transformation” from educational empowerment to educational reconstruction, a “creative transformation” from focusing on technology to highlighting thinking, a “human-oriented transformation” from emphasizing design to highlighting experience, a “participatory transformation” from technological application to technological R & D, and a “collaborative transformation” from focusing on a single perspective to benefiting the whole. Digital transformation is a fundamental process to achieve digital governance of vocational education, deepen education and teaching reforms, and modernize vocational education in the era of the digital economy, with important implications for improving the quality of education and teaching and promoting economic and social development.