5G technology creates a new education ecosystem and brings new challenges - Zhuang Rongxia

This article comes from "filter”, if there is any infringement or other issues, please contact us to delete it.Support the protection of intellectual property rights, please indicate the original source and author when reprinting.Recently, Associate Professor Zhuang Rongxia, associate professor of the Department of Education of Beijing Normal University and co-director of the Open Educational Resources Laboratory of the Smart Learning Institute, shared and exchanged views on "modern information technology promotes high-quality and balanced development of education" in an exclusive interview in the "Two Sessions Education Talk" column.

The "2021 Government Work Report" mentioned that fairer and higher-quality education should be developed in 2021; high-quality and balanced development of compulsory education should be promoted. What role do you think education informatization plays in improving the quality of education and achieving educational equity?

Associate Professor Zhuang Rongxia:"China Education Modernization 2035" proposes to "accelerate the reform of education in the information age, use modern technology to accelerate the reform of talent training models, and achieve an organic combination of large-scale education and personalized training." Large-scale education and personalized training reflect the two keywords of "education equity" and "education quality."

With the development of new generation information technologies such as 5G, big data, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence, it is necessary for us to deeply integrate these information technologies, especially intelligent technologies, with education and teaching. This integration will help narrow the gaps between some regions, urban and rural areas, and between schools in my country, and alleviate the problem of the digital divide in education and the uneven allocation of high-quality educational resources and high-quality teacher resources in different regions. At the same time, it can provide personalized, accurate, and high-quality learning guidance for student groups, ensuring the high quality of education on the basis of addressing equity.

This year’s government work report proposed to “increase the construction of 5G networks and gigabit optical networks and enrich application scenarios.” In the past two years, my country's 5G has developed rapidly. 5G has features such as ultra-high data rates, large-scale connections, low latency, and high reliability. These features have rich applications in education. Next, let’s take 5G as a small entry point to see whether 5G can help us solve the problems of educational equity and quality.

From an equity perspective, 5G and other technologies can be used to promote educational balance and solve the problem of digital divide in education.During the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic last year, our country launched large-scale online education and teaching. Relying on 5G networks, many attempts have been made in various places, such as 5G online classes, 5G remote teaching and research, 5G+4K video transmission, etc. The 5G network can ensure the stable operation of the educational resource platform. The combination of 5G with holographic technology, AR/VR technology, etc., makes some famous teacher courses and digital resources very vivid, helps promote the sharing of high-quality educational resources, serves the development of educational informatization, and serves the fairness and quality improvement of education.

in addition,In terms of specific educational applications of 5G,5GHigh bandwidth, low latency, high reliability and support for massive connections, etc.The basic features have been used by many schools and enterprises to explore some application scenarios in education, such as 5G+smart campus, 5G+smart classroom, 5G+ live teaching, 5G+VR teaching, etc.

In the early stage, our team tried to combine previous research results in the research project to describe the application scenarios of 5G from another perspective. The application scenarios of 5G in education are mainly reflected in five core fields centered on schools, namely schools, families, communities, public places and workplaces, and four extended fields, namely classrooms, school districts, venues and rural areas. This forms nine major fields, and 5G can find some special application scenarios in these nine major fields.

1. School field

School is the most important field. In the school field,5G smart campus, 5G enhanced interactive classroom, ultra-high-definition interactive teaching, remote and virtual simulation experiments, etc. are relatively distinctive application scenarios.This is also the case when 5G is combined with other smart technologies. These four application scenarios are briefly introduced below.

The first is 5G smart campus.On the one hand, 5G smart campus comprehensively uses 5G technology, big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and other technologies. From an environmental perspective, we focus on fully sensing the physical environment in the school through 5G and other technologies to help students identify learning situations; in schools, we must use various technologies and various data to support teaching, teaching and research, and various intelligent decision-making based on the identification of situations. On the other hand, some resource sharing between schools and schools and enterprises can be used to provide students with an open, online and offline integrated learning environment.

The second is 5G enhanced interactive classroom.In this classroom, holographic projection, AR/VR/MR/XR and other presentation technologies are integrated, combined with 5G network, to break down the existing classroom walls, combine online and offline, real and virtual, to give students a strong sense of immersion and facilitate teacher-student interaction. In this process, collaborative knowledge construction among students becomes more diverse. From a teacher's perspective, various sensing devices can be used to collect teaching and learning data from students and teachers during the teaching process. Teachers can carry out precise teaching based on these data to make students' learning in the classroom smarter.

The third is ultra-high-definition interactive teaching.5G is used to carry out ultra-high-definition interactive teaching, including interactive live teaching, hybrid synchronous teaching and other forms. This kind of interactive teaching can also meet the requirements of some subjects, such as music, dance and other subjects that have very precise time requirements. Double-teacher teaching can be carried out with the support of 5G technology to achieve a good experience and the sharing of high-quality resources.

The fourth is remote and virtual simulation experiments.5G can be combined with extended reality and other intelligent technologies to provide students with highly simulated and visual teaching content, and create experimental and practical teaching situations with a sense of presence, immersion and interactivity for students. Especially in this experimental situation, combined with Internet of Things technology, it is possible to remotely use the Internet to control some facilities and equipment and realize some remote simulation experiments.

2. Family field

In the home field, although WiFi is mostly used now, with the development of 5G technology, it is possible that one day in the future, the home will also be dominated by 5G. At this time, with 5G technology plus artificial intelligence technology, it is possible that there will be many types of machine learning companions at home, such as various small robots, etc. These are all possibilities.

3. Public areas

In public places, such as bus stops, bookstores, coffee shops, etc., people sometimes look at things to learn in these places, so it is also a place for learning. In these public places, 5G helps people form a seamless learning environment. As long as people have a convenient 5G device, they can study anytime and anywhere, and can accept school courses or other interests.

4. Venues and venues

In the field of venues, we often hear terms such as “smart venues” and “smart museums”. For example, science and technology museums are transforming into smart venues, so 5G technology can support students' immersive experience and promote their venue learning. The venue is also a very important place for learning.

5. Community or rural field

In communities or rural areas, especially in some rural areas or remote areas, we need to send 5G technology there. Not only a technology, but more importantly a way of learning. Therefore, we conceived a scenario called "5G Mobile Smart Classroom". "5G Mobile Smart Classroom" is like a mobile car. It not only sends the 5G network, but also some learning methods such as cooperation, inquiry, and experiential learning, allowing students to have some experiences, thereby closing the digital divide in terms of teaching or learning methods.

6. Workplace

In the workplace, a lot of training takes place here, which is also a very important learning environment. With the support of 5G and other technologies, and with the development of tactile Internet or skills Internet research, the learning of tactile-related motor skills such as playing the piano will be very rich and vivid. Students can also use the enhanced tactile interactive experience provided by the tactile Internet to learn skills such as remote maintenance and industrial training.

In schools, homes, public places, venues, communities, rural areas or workplaces, 5G has some special application scenarios. In general, 5G technology does not develop alone. It will support the development of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, edge computing, etc., making these technologies smarter. It has gradually become a consensus to use intelligent technology to solve current education and teaching problems.

Today, technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence are gradually being applied to education and teaching scenarios. I would like to ask you to talk about the challenges that teacher-student interaction will face in the application of educational scenarios?

Associate Professor Zhuang Rongxia:In teaching, more attention is now paid to students' perspectives, students' learning experience is emphasized, and teaching should be student-centered. The application of smart technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence has created a learning environment for students that is different from the previous classroom environment where teacher-student interaction was the main focus.

In the new environment, in addition to teachers and students, there is also some technical support. In this case, there are great challenges for teacher-student interaction. We often hear a word called"Three-dimensional space". For example, the way we meet face to face is the social space, the way we communicate online is the information space, and the room we are in now during the interview is the physical space. In the process of teaching and learning between teachers and students, they need to understand the interaction issues in a three-dimensional space in a physical space, an information space, and a face-to-face social space.

The application of these technologies gives many teaching models a characteristic: "online and offline integration" or "OMO". This makes the space we live in more complex. However, no matter how the space changes, the most important thing is interaction. We place a strong emphasis on student learning experiences and interactions. In interaction, on the one hand, there will be expression of words, which is behavioral interaction; on the other hand, feeling happy in communication is emotional interaction. Although the teaching models are diverse, there is always some behavioral interaction and emotional interaction required.

First, the interactive relationship changes.The original face-to-face interaction between teachers and students has expanded to the interaction between students and students, between teachers and students, between students and other people online, and between teachers and other online teaching colleagues, becoming multi-party interactions. This is the relationship challenge brought about by technology. Relationships are no longer single, but become more comprehensive and complex.

Second, the form of interaction changes.In the past, it was face-to-face interaction that could be seen. During the fight against the epidemic last year, the biggest challenge for teachers was to conduct live classes. Teachers can only see the screen and cannot see the students in the distance, so they have no idea how effective the lectures are. This creates an interaction challenge for teachers. In this regard, teachers can interact by allowing students to send messages and like online. This is a compensation method for interaction. This compensation can bring about a behavioral interaction and, more importantly, an emotional interaction between teachers and students.

The relationship challenges and formal challenges mentioned above are a bigger problem encountered by teachers.

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