World Digital Education Conference to be held in Shanghai

The 2024 World Digital Education Conference will be held from Jan 29 to 31 in Shanghai, attracting more than 400 guests from over 70 countries globally, the Ministry of Education shared on Friday.

Focusing on the application, sharing and innovation of digital education, multiple parallel sessions will be held during the conference to discuss topics including teachers' digital literacy and competence, Artificial Intelligence and digital ethics, as well as digital education assessment, an education official said at a news conference in Beijing.

The 2024 World Digital Education Conference will be the second time the conference has been held, with the first being held in Beijing in February last year.

Liu Jin, director of the ministry's Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges, said an alliance of world digital education will be established during the conference, she said.

The Digital and Smart Education Future Exhibition is scheduled simultaneously during the conference, featuring subjects such as digital transformation and smart education equipment, she added.

Meanwhile, the international edition of the Smart Education of China, an online platform of education resources, will be launched.

Zhou Dawang, director of the Department of Science, Technology and Informatization, said that since the platform was launched in March 2022, it has garnered more than 100 million registered users and 36.7 billion views.

The platform has more than 88,000 pieces of resources for primary and secondary school and over 10,000 high-quality courses for vocational education, he said.

China has the world's largest scale of Massive Open Online Courses and its MOOC system has become an international brand among the world's higher education, said Song Yi, an official with the Department of Higher Education.

Last year, China held the Global MOOC and Online Education Conference in Milan, Italy, marking the first time the event was held outside China, he said.

So far, the MOOC platforms in China have launched 341 global courses, with nearly 25.4 million learners participating, he added.