The next stop of vocational education informatization: digital technology moves from auxiliary means to in-depth application
◎Our reporter Zhang Gailun
74.54%
According to the "Report on the Development of Vocational Education Informatization (2021 Edition)", 74.54% of vocational education teachers said they would often use multimedia equipment such as computers, projectors, and electronic whiteboards for teaching.
In addition to multimedia equipment, the curriculum resources in the online teaching platform are also favored by teachers, and more than half of the teachers will routinely apply the curriculum resources of the online teaching platform.
Recently, the "Report on the Development of Vocational Education Informatization (2021 Edition)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") was officially released.
Based on a questionnaire survey of more than 995 vocational colleges, more than 8,000 teachers and nearly 150,000 students in the eastern, central, western and northeastern regions, the "Report" analyzes the development status of vocational education informatization from multiple dimensions.
The "Report" is under the guidance of the Ministry of Education's Department of Vocational Education and Adult Education, and jointly compiled by the Education Research Institute of Tsinghua University, the Ministry of Education's Vocational College Informatization Teaching Steering Committee and Tencent Education.
Dong Zhenhua, deputy director of the Teaching and Quality Division of the Department of Vocational Education and Adult Education of the Ministry of Education, pointed out at the "Report" conference that the core of vocational education informatization should focus on the characteristics of vocational education and courses, and promote the co-construction and sharing of digital resources. In particular, it is necessary to expand the use efficiency of resources, deepen the innovation of education and teaching models, and focus on promoting the transformation of traditional teaching with information technology.
Informatization teaching is gradually normalized
The "National Vocational Education Reform Implementation Plan" requires vocational education to "adapt to the development needs of 'Internet + vocational education' and use modern information technology to improve teaching methods and methods", providing new ideas for informatization support to lead the modernization of vocational education.
In March this year, the National Vocational Education Smart Education Platform was launched, including four major sections: professional and curriculum service center, textbook resource center, virtual simulation training center and teacher service center.
In the words of Chen Ziji, director of the Department of Vocational Education and Adult Education of the Ministry of Education, it not only meets the digital resources needs of teachers for systematic teaching and students’ systematic learning, but also serves the professional construction and teaching reform of vocational colleges.
This is also an important step in accelerating the digitalization and informatization construction of vocational education.
The "Report" also pointed out that, on the whole, student learning supported by information technology is more normalized.
The proportion of students who often read learning materials online is as high as 84.83%.
In addition, the proportion of students who often use the platform functions of "viewing learning materials", "submitting assignments", "watching live classes" and "doing quizzes" for online learning also exceeded 50%.
Teachers are also embracing digital technology.
The "Report" shows that 74.54% of vocational teachers said they would often use multimedia equipment such as computers, projectors, and electronic whiteboards for teaching.
In addition to multimedia equipment, the curriculum resources in the online teaching platform are also favored by teachers, and more than half of the teachers will routinely apply the curriculum resources of the online teaching platform.
Han Xibin, editor-in-chief of the "Report" and deputy dean of the Education Research Institute of Tsinghua University, pointed out that with the gradual normalization of informatization teaching, the impact of informatization on teaching behavior has also "advanced".
The role of information technology in supporting teaching in vocational colleges has gone from helping teachers to successfully achieve "advanced" teaching design to improving teaching personalization and teaching quality.
"Improving the quality of education and creating high-quality classrooms through educational informatization is gradually becoming a reality," he said.
The "reputation rate" of virtual simulation training exceeds 90%
The integration of production and education is a key link in the development of vocational education. This link involves a large number of practical training and teaching. The scenes are complex, there are many interactions between characters, and the individual needs are more prominent than ordinary education.
Traditional training and teaching requires the school to invest a lot of money to introduce equipment and build training rooms or training bases.
Students are concentrated, the training time is limited, and the training content cannot be reviewed, and the students' observation and teachers' teaching effects are not stable enough.
In addition, problems such as equipment loss and safety risks will inevitably arise during the training process.
Therefore, virtual simulation training has become the focus of many vocational colleges.
Liaoning Railway Vocational and Technical College has a provincial-level excellent course - "Mixed Teaching of Safety and Efficiency Escorts for Shunting Operations".
The operation of this course involves railway safety, and the required training equipment is bulky, expensive, and has high operational risks.
In order to solve these problems, the college has introduced virtual simulation training technology, relying on the school-enterprise joint construction of the training room for basic shunting skills, creating a workplace-oriented teaching situation that is close to the actual work of the post.
Through virtual reality technology, students can experience the operation process of vehicle drop and hang, vehicle slip prevention, hose picking and so on.
The "Report" shows that only 3.82% of vocational school students have never used virtual simulation training software, and those who have used it have a greater sense of identity with the positive effects of virtual simulation training software, giving them high praise more than 90% of the population.
However, when investigating the application of digital educational resources, the "Report" also found that 12.55% of the students admitted that they did not use virtual simulation experimental software very much, and 42.2% of the interviewed teachers had never used the virtual simulation training environment to carry out teaching activities. .
Han Xibin believes that virtual simulation training is a new training method for vocational education. It will not completely replace physical training, but it can replace some physical training and should become the development direction of the next step in the reform of information-based teaching.
Teachers and students should be "lifelong learners" in the information age
However, the research team of the "Report" also found some problems.
It can be seen from the questionnaire results that when using the information-based teaching platform, teachers and students in vocational colleges use more functions such as "homework submission" and "view playback". In the more critical teaching activities and steps, the platform only starts To the "auxiliary" role, but not to the level of "fusion".
That is to say, from the perspective of teaching, the in-depth application of information technology in teaching still needs to be further expanded.
"Moreover, there are many new technologies that have not exerted their due potential in innovating teaching models and improving teaching quality, and the phenomenon of 'idle' and 'cooled', such as new technologies, new equipment, and new technology environments that are currently popular, has appeared. "Han Xibin pointed out that the lack of practicability, low relevance and low ease of use of information-based teaching resources are still prominent problems in the construction of information-based teaching resources in vocational colleges.
In addition, teachers' informatization teaching ability should also be paid attention to.
The "Report" pointed out that 36.6%, 48.1%, 49.2% and 47.7% of the teachers surveyed were not familiar with 5G technology, virtual reality/augmented reality technology and related tools, artificial intelligence technology, industrial Internet, etc.
In general, the level of teachers' application of emerging information technology tools still needs to be improved, and the innovation of teaching models based on information technology is not enough.
Han Xibin suggested that teachers and students should establish the concept of lifelong learning, reshape the learning thinking in the information age, and change from "learning with technology" to "learning from technology"; at the same time, schools should improve students' self-management ability in learning, Cultivating lifelong learners in the information age.
Song Xianjun, deputy secretary of the party committee and dean of Lanzhou Vocational and Technical College, emphasized that the next step in the development of vocational education informatization should achieve three points: focus on the goal of talent training, deepen the integration of production and education, school-enterprise cooperation, and build high-quality classrooms; focus on the needs of students , realize the personalization of learning resources, and explore the depth of classroom interaction; centering on the improvement of the overall information literacy of managers, deepen the continuous transformation of the management service model, and realize the normal development of teachers and students' information technology application ability.
In order to provide teachers and students with more abundant and available teaching resources, Han Xibin also suggested that the supply of digital resources should be enriched and the resource operation mechanism of co-construction and sharing should be improved.
For example, we can promote the construction of a national-level vocational education professional teaching resource library, and guide various vocational colleges in various regions to develop virtual simulation training resources and personalized autonomous learning systems based on the workplace environment and work process as needed. At the same time, we can explore the construction of government guidance, market Participating in the co-construction and sharing platform of digital educational resources, serving curriculum development, teaching design, teaching implementation and teaching evaluation.