Trends of Future Development

Abstract

The rapid development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has and will continue to shape and transform the development of education. Blended learning, as an important educational innovation, has brought about profound changes in teaching and learning.

The rapid development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has and will continue to shape and transform the development of education. Blended learning, as an important educational innovation, has brought about profound changes in teaching and learning. The design of blended learning environments will be an important area for researchers and practitioners in preparing students for future learning. Influenced by the initiatives of openness, digitization and sharing of resources, Open Education Resources (OER) have become an important area in blended learning. Blended learning has become the new normal in higher education. Ubiquitous learning is well supported by blended learning. Emerging technologies are changing the way we think about the nature of education, education reform, and the structure of the higher education ecosystem.

This chapter explores the future development of blended learning from various aspects, such as blended learning space, OERs, ubiquitous learning, change of educational philosophy, and design of educational ecosystem. Section one discusses the definition of blended learning and the affordances of technology for blended learning space design, the trend of future development of blended learning space, and its impact on teaching and learning. Section two provides a systematic review of OERs, identifies the future development of OERs, and suggests the strategies to promote the application of OERs for blended learning. Section three discusses the concepts of ubiquitous learning, strategies for promoting ubiquitous learning, and the future development of ubiquitous learning. Section four deals with the recent development of educational philosophies and learning theories, and the reform of the educational ecosystem. This chapter discusses the connection between theories and practices to ensure a realistic yet forward-looking perspective. The target audience of the chapter includes administrators, teachers, and researchers at various levels of higher education and vocational education institutions.

7.1 Space for Blended Learning

With the development of the Internet, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies, the teaching and learning space is undergoing significant changes. The integration of various learning spaces is an important trend of the future development of blended learning. The integrated blended learning space, allowing future teaching and learning to occur, is an important basis for systematic reform through blended learning.

7.1.1 Blended Learning Space

Pan (2018) pointed out that human society is moving from a traditional physical-social dual space to a ternary space of physical-social-information. All aspects of human work and life, including teaching and learning, are carried out in these three spaces. Compared with the physical and social spaces, information space demonstrates characteristics such as spatio-temporal flexibility, resource sharing, digitalized behaviors, networked relationship, and system connectivity (Chen et al. 2019). The information space not only breaks through the limitations of physical and social spaces, but also helps bridge other two spaces and creates a brand new blended learning space through blending the virtual and physical learning environment.

The traditional teacher-centered perspectives called the places where teaching activities occurred as “teaching spaces” (Qi 2011), one of which is the traditional classroom. With the shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered perspectives and with the development of educational technologies, concepts such as “learning space”, “online learning space” and “virtual learning community” have emerged. This Manual refers all places where either teaching or learning activities occur as “learning spaces”. Given that a traditional teaching space is mainly physical whereas an online learning space is mainly virtual, many scholars adopted the term “blended learning space” meaning a combination of the offline physical space represented by classrooms, libraries, laboratories, etc. and the online virtual information space supported by ICT. In blended learning space, the real time multi-facet data related to the learning activities in the physical and virtual learning environment could be collected and analyzed through various sensors (Li et al. 2013). In a blended learning space, the definition of learning and the role of learners and technologies may change (Wu 2017). The blended learning space allows learners to engage in learning activities continuously and ubiquitously with any devices, enabling learners to learn anytime, anywhere. Through in-depth data mining and analysis about learners’ learning and context, evidence-based learning analytic and assessment could be conducted to understand and monitor learners’ learning, and recommend high-quality learning resources, suggest suitable learning tasks which are appropriate for the individual learners, so as to help learners make informed decisions, and promote the creative and inventive thinking, character building, competency development (Zhu 2016a, b). The blended learning spaces, with the combined advantages from physical learning space and virtual learning space, has become an important learning place for future learning to occur.

7.1.2 Affordances of Technologies for the Design of Blended Learning Space

The meaningful blended learning cannot be achieved without the support of various technologies in the information age, such as the Internet, big data, 5G, artificial intelligence, virtual reality/augmented reality, etc.

• (1) The Internet. There are huge number of educational resources on the Internet, promoting the sharing of high-quality educational resources. Similar to the case that grassroots can open stores on Taobao, in the Internet age, large amount of valuable educational resources are created and shared by various stakeholders in the society. Almost everybody, including authoritative experts, teachers, enterprises, and grass-root individuals can develop educational resources and share them online. Teachers are no longer the only authoritative sources of knowledge. The “knowledge wall” in higher education institutions is collapsing (Chen 2016). The knowledge dissemination is much more convenient than before. The depth, breadth and speed of such dissemination can be enjoyed by everyone with Internet access (Chen and Qi 2014). The openness, resources sharing and digitalization initiatives are changing the traditional mode of resource development in higher education institutions. Mobilizing various stakeholders to co-develop education resources together does not only help solve the problem of repetitive effort of resource creation, but also helps break the bottleneck created by “information island” in higher education institutions. Therefore, it can effectively address the gap between what education provides and what society demands (Chen et al. 2017). In the future, Internet technology will continue support the development of spatio-temporally flexible, multi-modal, and interconnected blended learning spaces, providing new opportunities for the development of blended learning.

• (2) Big data and educational data mining. The rapid development of big data technology facilitates the digitization of behaviors and provides strong support for more accurate and customized information push and selection in the online environment (Chen et al. 2019). In the future, all behaviors of digital learners can be collected and analyzed real-time. The learning analytics of online teaching and learning behaviors could inform educators and learners about the teaching and learning processes and outcomes, which inform them the next step of action for teaching and learning. The learning analytics could help us understand learners’ strength and areas of improvement much better.’The learning resources can be more accurately recommended to learners, thereby improving their learning efficiency and effectiveness. Teaching analytics based on the online data’also reflect teachers’ teaching behaviors, which facilitate evidence based decision making for teaching and educational management. In the future, the teaching and learning, and educational management will be transformed into a much more refined mode with educational data mining. Data science will be pervasively applied in various aspects of teaching and learning, which will promote the development of future educational research paradigms.

• (3) 5G technology. 5G technology has the characteristics of broad bandwidth, wide connection, and low latency. 5G technology has a profound impact on the construction of learning spaces, and in turn affect other elements of teaching and learning, and their relationships. In particular, the learning spaces supported by 5G technology are more conducive for skill- or competency-based learning. Such a learning space can provide richer teaching resources during the learning process, which will promote structural changes in physical learning spaces. Physical learning spaces and virtual learning spaces, and in and out of school learning spaces can be well connected. Broad bandwidth and low-latency network connection not only facilitates the integration of classroom learning and workplace learning, but more importantly, it supports students to interact in real time with the virtual or virtual-real learning contexts. The big data on students’ learning behaviors recorded during the learning process can be used for diagnostic assessment which support evidence-based decision making for future improvement in teaching and learning. In the future, 5G technology, together with other emerging technologies, will promote the advancement of educational hardware and software, facilitate the integration of physical and virtual learning environments, and make personalized, contextualized, and data-driven learning a norm (Zhuang et al. 2020).

• (4) Artificial intelligence (AI). The development and application of AI technology, including machine learning, knowledge graph, natural language processing, robotics and intelligent control, are increasingly applied in education. The AI will affect the education in the future in the following aspects. First, machine learning can be used to predict learners’ academic performance, analyze learning challenges and obstacles, and identify the risk of dropout. Second, natural language processing technology can be used to realize automatic assessment of essays and spoken language. Third, knowledge graphs can be applied to automatically answer knowledge-based questions, and accurately recommend customized learning resources to learners. Fourth, robotics and intelligent control technology make it possible to develop robots for educational purposes such as learning companion to help with knowledge transfer and emotional companionship.

Another important future direction is AI (such as perceptual intelligence and computational intelligence) empowered differentiated and personalized learning. First, learning context data can be analyzed to provide information on personalized and differentiated learner profiles. Second, appropriate teaching context can be provided to personalize teaching and learning. Third, multi-facet automated assessment can be conducted and personalized learning and development paths can be formulated and recommended to students. By doing so, the individualized and personalized learning can be achieved.

• (5) Virtual Reality (VR)/Augmented Reality (AR). VR/AR technology can be embedded in physical learning space. They can replicate the virtual scenes that do not exist in physical space (Yang et al. 2021). For example, a virtual library built based on VR/AR technology can simulate the precious or obsolete books in the library and present them in a dynamic three-dimensional manner, allowing readers to read the books in the virtual space. A team led by Professor Hwang Gwo-Jen of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology used VR/AR technology in ubiquitous learning of context awareness, where authentic scenes that learners cannot perceive in physical space were represented in virtual space, realizing the integration of physical and virtual space (Yang et al. 2021). The virtual reality and augmented reality technology will impact future education in the following aspects. First, it helps students learn course content in a richer context that is closer to the real world. Second, it breaks the constraints of traditional physical classrooms, allowing students to explore and interact with environments and characters that are difficult to access in reality. Third, it facilitates students’ experiential learning, helping them overcome their challenge of over-reliance on theory and lack of practical inquiry.

On top of the above technologies, other emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and block chain technology will also play a supportive role in the construction and application of future blended learning spaces, supporting the design and implementation of various teaching and learning activities in blended learning spaces.

7.1.3 The Future of Blended Learning Spaces

Supporting smart seamless learning

The blended learning spaces supports the free and orderly switching of different learning scenarios such as online and offline, formal and informal, and providing learners with a complete set of integrated learning support. The blended learning spaces accommodate diverse learning strategies such as class lecture, group collaboration, self-directed learning, and improves learners’ adaptability and comfortableness. It is an environment that facilitates students’ collaboration, their access to the Internet, promotes authentic learning, and respects the individual needs of students (Yang et al. 2013).

Seamless learning occurs in different contexts at any time, where fast and easy switch between learning contexts is realized with the support of mobile devices. It helps bridge of the in-class and out-of-class learning, synchronous and asynchronous communication, formal and informal learning, and the integration of various pedagogies and learning activities (Zhu and Sun 2015), providing students with a complete and continuous learning experience. The blended learning space is highly flexible. By addressing the constraints of traditional physical learning spaces, it provides learners with diverse learning support, allowing them to flexibly choose from online or offline, or from synchronous or asynchronous learning methods according to their time, space and learning resource preferences. In this way, students are no longer passive learners, but are empowered to flexibly select appropriate learning methods according to their own learning needs. Therefore, blended learning space opens up a new opportunity to realize seamless learning (Xiao et al. 2021).

Adaptive learning space based on big data

Adaptive learning space refers to a learning space with adaptive learning function. To construct an adaptive learning space, it is necessary to pay attention to different variables that affect the learning outcomes and their relationships, so as to establish an optimized learning path. This requires an investigation into the learning styles and cognitive processes of different profiles of learners, and then builds a “learning model”. A “mathematical model” is built based on the complex learning model. This “mathematical model” needs to match human cognition when constructing of the adaptive learning spaces (Shen 2020).

Students’ learning behaviors in authentic learning contexts are often complex and diverse. Traditional assessment methods emphasize on the level of knowledge acquisition. The formative and diversified assessment requires the support of technology and the collection of big data. Learning analysis based on big data can describe and explain the past learning behaviors, inform or intervene ongoing learning, and infer and predict future development trends. These allow learners to understand their own learning process and outcomes much better. They can be guided with optimized development path. In a blended learning space, conducting in-depth mining and analysis of big data can enrich the assessment indicators, strengthen the formative assessment and improve learners’ self-assessment and peer assessment (Qian and Wang 2013).

A learning environment of virtual-physical integration

The development of technologies such as artificial intelligence, human–computer interaction, and the Internet of Things in education have impact in constructing a blended learning environment that integrates virtual and physical learning spaces. A virtual-real fusion environment relies on sensors to connect the physical world and the virtual one through the Internet. As an important part of the Internet of Things, sensors which identify and acquire information in the real world can be directly used by learners after digital processing. The Internet and multimedia technology support the acquisition of resources related to their learning topics in a personalized learning environment (Zhang et al. 2013). Digital Twin (DT) technology, which emerges with modeling simulation and sensing, makes it possible to build multi-dimensional, multi-scale, multi-disciplinary, and multi-physical dynamic digital virtual models of physical objects in the virtual space. It effectively connects physical space and virtual space, to provide learners with more real-time, efficient and intelligent educational services (Wang and Zhou 2021). The diverse experiences brought by different spaces in the virtual-real integration environment provides learners with various learning experiences ranging from concrete to abstract, and to experience multi-modal perceptual learning, embodied cognitive learning and connected learning (Yang and Zhang 2021).

7.1.4 The Impact of the Development of Learning Spaces on Blended Learning

A learning space is important for teaching and learning to occur. Its development profoundly affects the area of blended learning. Since the Internet began to be applied in education, it has had a huge impact on teaching and learning in schools. Internet technology is increasingly widely used by teachers in various learning contexts, and more and more students start to engage in online learning. As teachers’ online teaching and students’ online learning is increasing, a blend of online and offline learning has become a rising. There are two forms of blended learning, namely, blended learning supported by traditional physical spaces and blended learning supported by blended learning spaces.

In the early stage of blended learning, learning and teaching was largely happening in physical spaces supported by technologies, such as multimedia classrooms, laboratories, simulation training places, libraries, network interactive places, etc. The technologies provided teaching or learning resources, and teaching aids, etc., and yet they were not able to generate a learning space that was to be integrated with the offline physical spaces. The role of technology in limited without exerting a deep impact on learning. This kid of blended learning space could not meet the requirements of integrated learning scenarios, full coverage of learning processes, intelligent learning activities, customized learning progress, and personalized learning interventions. The proportion of face-to-face teaching in the classroom was relatively high where students had less opportunities to engaged in active learning.

With the rapid development of technology the form of blended learning has shifted from blended learning supported by traditional physical spaces to that supported by blended learning spaces. Blended learning spaces integrate offline physical space and online virtual, forming a virtual-real integrated learning environment that supports the blended teaching needs of teachers and students (Han 2022). Technologies such as the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) not only provide teaching or learning resources and teaching aids, but effectively constitutes an information space that is integrated with the offline physical space to form a new learning or teaching space. This role of technology in this blended learning space goes beyond mere “assistance”. Instead, it begins to exert a deep influence on teaching and learning. Moreover, it realizes the integration of learning scenarios, comprehensive coverage of the learning process, intelligent learning activities, customized learning progress, and personalized learning interventions (Han 2022). For blended learning supported by the blended learning space, the proportion of face-to-face teaching in the classroom is getting lower and lower, while that of self-directed learning supported by online learning spaces is getting increasingly higher. Thus, a transformation of teachers’ pedagogy and of students’ learning strategies is truly realized.

7.2 Open Educational Resources: Important Learning Resources for Promoting Blended Learning

Since the launch of the Open Course Ware Initiative (OCW) at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2001, the Open Educational Resources Movement has flourished around the world. Open educational resources (OERs) have promoted educational equity, co-construction and sharing of resources, and transformation of higher education, which are bound to be an important form of learning resources that supports the development and reform of blended learning.

The concept of OERs was first proposed and defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at the Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries held in 2002 (UNESCO 2017). Since then, OERs have been continuously endowed with richer connotations. In the “Recommendation Concerning Open Educational Resources” approved by UNESCO in 2019, OERs are defined as “ any form of learning, teaching and research materials in a variety of media that are available in the public domain or in the form of open licenses that allow others to access, reuse, repurpose, adapt and redistribute them free of charge” (UNESCO 2019). An open license refers to “a license that provides permission for the public to access, reuse, repurpose, adapt, and redistribute educational materials while respecting the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner” (UNESCO 2019).

7.2.1 Types of Open Educational Resources

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) classified OERs into three categories: a. learning content including courses, courseware, modules, learning objects, collections, and journals etc.; b. tools which refer to software supporting the development, use, reuse and delivery of learning content, including tools for searching, developing, and organizing content, learning management systems, and online learning communities. c. implementation resources which refer to learning intellectual property licensing of learning content and tools, strategies for promoting public distribution of materials, optimized practice design principles and localization of content (Hylén 2006). Some commonly used OERs are listed below.

Open Courseware (OCW)

Open Courseware (OCW) is the earliest developed and most mature form of OERs. Open Courseware Consortium (OCWC) defines open courseware as a. digital resources with free public licenses, which can be accessed by anyone at any time through the Internet; b. high-quality curriculum-level educational resources for higher education institutions; (3) course-based which include course plans, assessment tools, and subject content. MIT initiated the OCW movement. As of 2017, MIT has made more than 2,400 courses available to the public, nearly half of which are available in translated versions. Its open courseware covers 36 majors of its 5 colleges, with more than 2 million monthly visits and a total of more than 250 million visits.

“iCourse” is the official website of the “High-quality Open Courses in Chinese Higher Education Institutions” program launched by China’s Ministry of Education. It displays open courses in video format and share resource of higher education institutions in China, with 329 partner universities and 2,882 online courses. Upon voluntary application and sharing by higher education institutions and teachers, high-quality open courses based on recommendation, evaluation and selection are displayed on the website.

Open access repositories

Open access (OA) archives or repositories are equivalent to online interactive document sharing platforms, providing access to teaching materials, exam question banks, professional development resources and other materials. Generally, materials are uploaded by authors using a specific format, and released after going through official review, whereas users can read and download the documents online (Cai 2007). For example, Baidu Wenku (https://wenku.baidu.com) was launched on November 12, 2009. To date its content has covered 53 subject areas including basic education, qualification exams, humanities and social sciences, IT, natural sciences, etc., with more than 2,600 organization users, and a daily visit of 40 million. More than 8 million teacher users, that is, nearly 60% teachers in China, shared educational resources through Baidu Wenku. Moreover, it has been integrated with existing information platforms of many provinces, cities and schools.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)

MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) are online courses featuring with large-scale student interaction and network-based open access. It has the characteristics of large scale, openness, networking, personalization and participation. Typical MOOC platforms include: Udacity (http://www.udacity.com), Coursera (http://www.coursera.org), and edX (http://www.edx.org) in the United States, Future Learn (http://www.futurelearn.com/courses) in the United Kingdom, Open2Study (http://www.open2study.com) in Australia and NetEase Cloud Classroom (http://study.163.com), Chinese University MOOC (http://www.icourse163.org), and Xuetangx Online (http://v1-www.xuetangx.com) in China, etc.

Massive Open Online Experiments (MOOE)

MOOE (Massive Open Online Experiments) is a brand-new mode of experiment. Using technologies such as virtualization and Software Defined Network (SDN), MOOE can quickly build various experimental environments with high complexity and strong isolation that addresses the limitations of traditional laboratories in terms of time, space and experimental content (Zhu 2016a, b). MOOEs can be applied in various scenarios. For example, as of February 28, 2022, China’s national virtual simulation experiment teaching course sharing platform (http://www.ilab-x.com/) has included a total of 3,250 experimental projects, covering 61 disciplines including management, chemistry, and mechanics.

Open textbooks

Open textbooks are an important form of open digital books which are under an open copyright license that is available online for free use by students, teachers, and the public. It is published in print, e-book, or audio formats. Under the license, anyone is free to use, adapt or redistribute the content of the textbooks (Zhao et al. 2019). College Open Textbooks, an online community established in 2008, aimed to promote public awareness and the use of open textbooks. It served more than 200 community colleges, promoted the use of open textbooks to more than 2,000 communities and some other two-year colleges, and offered nearly 800 textbooks covering 24 subject areas. It conducts peer review on the content of open textbooks to ensure the quality of the content (Zhao et al. 2019).

Digital venues

Using VR, AR, Mixed Reality (MR) and other technologies, digital venues use the Internet as the basic platform to display exhibits including those that cannot be displayed in physical venues. It has the characteristics of digitization, networking, distribution and sharing, which, to a large extent, makes up for the imbalance caused by geographical distances. Digital venues include digital museums, digital science and technology museums. For example, Digital Exhibition Hall of the National Museum of China (http://www.chnmuseum.cn/portals/0/web/vr/) hosts more than 50 exhibitions, covering the themes of historical relics, art treasures, cultural relics from various countries, etc. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (https://www.metmuseum.org/) launched “The Met Unframed” program in January 2021, bringing visitors an immersive virtual art and gaming experience. China Digital Science and Technology Museum (https://www.cdstm.cn/museum/) used virtual reality technology to provide 3D models, virtual assemblies, panoramas and other content in its “Aviation” and “Aerospace” expo halls, where 3D models of aircraft of spacecraft on exhibition can be freely rotated and zoomed. In “Earth Dinosaur” exhibition of the Virtual Science and Technology Museum of Japan (https://www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/zh/), more than 10 dinosaur simulation models were used. The dinosaurs roared from time to time, with their limbs slowly swinging, which was very real during the simulation (Zeng 2010).

7.2.2 Future Direction of OERs

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, OERs have spread out to the world, bring impact to education and other areas in the whole society. Many countries and region have exploring OER projects that are suitable to their specific context. Although the development of OERs faces many challenges, with its open concept, technology and collaboration platforms, many areas of OERs can be continuously explored.

The role of OERS has shifted from supporting to innovating education

OERs have been developed rapidly. The role of OERs is shifting from merely supporting education toward innovating education. With the increasing depth and breadth of openness, OERs continuously expand the learning space, enhance the quality of educational services, promote the creation, dissemination and application of knowledge and information, and brings about innovation in various aspects of teaching and learning.

The educational innovations brought by OERs include the depth and the breadth of innovation and openness. OERs help transform open school educational resources to open lifelong educational resources. Since MIT launched the OCW in 2001, OERs gradually changed from static materials to dynamic teaching, and then to dynamic learning, all of which, in essence, are important elements of school education. Providing services to support lifelong learning is an important trend for the development of OERs. For example, the Open Learning Project of Open University of the United Kingdom, the National Digital Learning Resource Center project led by National Open University of China, and the Shanghai Education Resource Bank Project undertaken by the Shanghai Distance Education Group are all large-scale projects that support lifelong learning. These large-scale high-quality OERs take the advantages of distance education and the experience of constructing high-quality resources.

In terms of the breadth of innovation and openness, the target groups of OERs have expanded from the general population to the groups that need special education. This is to address the problem that despite the increasing availability of OERs, few resources are available for learners with special needs. Aiming to increasing educational opportunities and equity, OERs benefit learners, especially those with special needs. Meeting the needs of special learning groups will be a direction of the development of OERs in the future. In fact, ICT with multimedia affordances not only offset the constraints of the physical learning space by reducing the learning barriers to some extent, but also help with personalized learning. One example was using VR game prototype developed by Nicoletta for teaching mathematics to deaf children in kindergartens.

OERs are transforming higher education system in that many courses offered by different universities are parked in a single website. Nathan Harden (in press) pointed out that network technology and new educational models will contribute to the collapse of the traditional higher education system, and a considerable number of universities will disappear. In fact, this is happening. For example, as a new type of distance education university, Western Governors University in Utah does not offer any course but do accreditation only. Learners are awarded a certificate once they pass a test organized by the school. In recent years, with the promotion of MOOC and other OERs, programs such as credit certification, degree certification, and project certification emerged, which have transformed the higher education system.

From open digital educational resources to intellectual educational resources

Digital educational resources are educational resources in digital form that are specially designed for teaching and learning purposes. The examples are various teaching material libraries, test question banks, etc. Compared with physical resources, digital resources are easily to be created, replicated, disseminated, and openly shared across regions and schools. The digital educational resources still exist in a static form.

Intellectual education resources often include skills, knowledge, experience, know-how, learning ability, creativity developed by teachers and researchers. The resources also include values, insights, perceptions, interpersonal synergy, emotional control, responsibility and loyalty that can be identified in individual minds. Intellectual education resources are developed gradually. Compared with static digital education resources, intellectual education resources are more dynamic. The creators of intellectual education resources include outstanding researchers and practitioners in higher education institutions, who are able to effectively use ICT for collaboration and sharing, so as to quickly organize knowledge resources, design and develop online learning environment, and provide comprehensive valuable educational services to others.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic, the trend of opening up intellectual education resources to the public has been accelerated. Higher education institutions in China have begun to explore the ways to realize “suspending classes without stopping learning”, exploring more online education, blended learning and other teaching and strategies. Online teaching and learning are promoted by taking the advantages such as synchronous and asynchronous learning, inquiry-based learning, learning at anytime and anywhere etc. It is predicted that, the abovementioned learning models will become a new normal in the post-epidemic era. The sharing of intellectual education resources has become a trend, with more and more college learners benefiting from it.

Integrating emerging technology into OERs

The emerging technologies represented by artificial intelligence, big data, VR etc. are deeply integrated in education. These technologies have lent great support to the development of OERs. Many OERs have transformed from one-dimension into three-dimensions. For example, VR technology can be used to develop immersive experiential digital educational resources, 5G technology can be used to develop high-definition reality-based digital educational resources, and artificial intelligence technology can be adopted to create digital educational resources featuring human–computer collaboration.

In terms of application of OERs, 5G + VR/AR technology can support high-speed transmission and processing of complex interactive resources on various intelligent learning terminals. Artificial intelligence technology can support ontology feature recognition and adaptive recommendation of various multi-modal resources (Ke et al. 2021). Some other promising applications include the multi-modal learning analytics in the resource learning system, machine learning in the digital resource content supervision, and blockchain technology in the management of digital education resource circulation. At present, ICT integration in teaching, learning and educational management supports the knowledge creation, dissemination, and processing, and thus help creates a new ecology of richer and more scientific open education resources supported by ICT.

7.2.3 Strategies for Promoting OERs

The previous sections discussed the characteristics of OERs and identified the future directions of OERs. The following section will propose strategies for promoting OERs.

Promoting quality certification system and high-quality development of OERs

Since 2013, OERs have sprung up in China. However, in the early years the quality certification system was relatively loosely controlled. As a result, the quality of resources on the OER platforms such as Chinese University MOOC, XuetangX, and NetEase Cloud Classroom has been uneven. The volume of China’s OERs has become very large nowadays. It is time to emphasize on the quality instead of quantity of OERs. A quality assurance framework with a clear set of criteria and standards could help ensure the healthy development of OERs. Policymakers shall take the lead in this by forming a committee of experts and stakeholders from various fields to work. At present, the Ministry of Education of China is actively researching and formulating national standards for OERs. In the future, the accreditation of OERs of universities will be explored deeper with collaboration among various stakeholders. Effort need to be made to improve the reputation and gain social trust. Moreover, requirements for access and permission of OERs should be improved, and recognition from education authorities and universities should be implemented.

Promoting the integration of MOOE and MOOC, and opening of experimental platforms

With the development of OERs, especially the MOOCs, the walls between universities have been broken. Cross-university learning has been realized. Taping on MOOC platforms, learners from all over the world can learn courses offered by prestigious universities and institutions colleges around the world very easily. Learners from various geographical locations with different profiles can form learning communities online.

China’s MOOCs, such as courses offered on Chinese University MOOC, XuetangX and other platforms, also have their limitations. Most of the courses are theoretical courses, with less practice and experimental courses offered. In this regard, the emergence of MOOE can address the disadvantages of MOOC by emphasizing on practical teaching and cross-school learning. With the help of the experimental environment built by virtual platforms, experimental tasks are no longer limited to classrooms on campus, but can be completed anytime and anywhere. Students conduct experiments, exchange learning experiences and learning habits, evaluate courses, and experiments together on MOOE platforms. It is necessary to integrate MOOE and MOOC for courses which are practice driven. MOOE and MOOC complement with each other by achieving optimized teaching and learning effect (Wang 2019).

Promoting the integration of digital twin and venues, and advancing the open digital venues

Multi-modal digital venues is one of the trendy OERs. Venues has great potential to enhance school education. The existing venues have some limitations such as poor information service efficiency, poor data sharing, and low level of learning support services. Research shows that the integration of big data, artificial intelligence, VR, digital twin and other technologies can make the venues smarter to meet the personalized learning needs. It is beneficial to build a digital twin of physical entities in the virtual space to connect the data of the virtual space and that of the physical space of the venues, and optimize the presentation and configuration of resources in the venues. With more convenient acquisition and use of resources, more accurate learning analytics, and diversified learning strategies, the goal of opening the venue is achieved.

Any object in the physical space of digital twin has its corresponding “twin” in the virtual space. Such a “twin” spontaneously aggregates data from different spaces and to form a unique mapping of the physical object in the virtual space. Learning that takes place in such venue mostly takes the form of a trigger interaction. After the digital “twin” joins, the interaction in the venue is not only limited to the interaction between the learner and the exhibits, the learner and the environment, and the learner with other learners, but also in between the learner and the digital twin, and between different digital twins (Wang and Zhou 2021).

7.3 Ubiquitous Learning to Support Blended Learning

With the advent of the information age and the rapid development of science and technology, modern information technology, especially the new generation, continues to evolve and permeate all areas of society, including education; the teaching and learning styles of humans have also been deeply influenced and have undergone profound changes. In the information age, blended teaching and learning have become normalized methods in higher education, and ubiquitous learning will also become an important form of learning that adapts to this normal teaching or learning mode.

7.3.1 The Basic Idea of Ubiquitous Learning

As early as the twelfth century, in the Southern Song Dynasty of China, Zhu Xi had put forward the concept of “Learning in everything, every moment and everywhere”. In the seventeenth century, Comenius introduced the pansophic idea of ​​ “to teach all the things to all people” in his book Didactica Magna, which is the earliest Western exposition related to the concept of ubiquitous learning (Liu and Nong 2020). Ubiquitous learning is derived from the concept “Ubiquitous Computing”, which was pioneered by the American scientist Mark Weiser in 1988. As Weiser puts it in The computer for the twenty-first century, “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it” (Weiser 1991). Scholars in Japan, South Korea, Europe and North America have successively put forward similar concepts, arguing that ubiquitous learning is as naturally integrated into the daily social life of human beings as air and water. Jones and Jo (2004) suggested that the assimilation of ubiquitous computing technologies in education marks a great advancement—the emergence of ubiquitous learning through the concept of ubiquitous computing. Bomsdorf (2005) argued that ubiquitous computing has led to ubiquitous learning, which embeds individual learning activities in everyday life.

Since its emergence, the concept of ubiquitous learning has taken a relatively short period of time to develop from 3A (Anywhere, Anytime, Any Device) to 4A (Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere, Any Device), then to 5A (Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere, Any Device, Anyway) and 7A (Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere, Any Device, Anyway, Any contents, Any learning support). Therefore ubiquitous learning is also known as universal learning, seamless learning, learning everywhere and so on.

The understanding of the connotation of ubiquitous learning varies, mainly in the broad and narrow senses. In the narrow sense, ubiquitous learning is primarily defined in terms of the supporting environment and technology; with the support of ubiquitous technology and pervasive computing, learners actively use easily accessible resources to carry out a variety of learning activities according to their learning content and cognitive goals. In the broad sense, ubiquitous learning is defined more at a conceptual level, as a type of learning that can be done everywhere and pervade everywhere. Learners can access information and resources in a timely manner with appropriate tools and environments, as long as they are willing to. Ubiquitous learning is characterized by its ubiquity, accessibility, interactivity, contextuality and personalization.

7.3.2 Strategies for Promoting Ubiquitous Learning

Ubiquitous learning requires ubiquitous networks, computing power, learning resources, and learning services. Li and Zheng (2006) believed that the research on ubiquitous learning should be conducted in three aspects: technical environment, learning resources, and learning concepts. Yang et al (2013) argued that the realization of a harmonious ubiquitous learning environment needs to address three key problems: hard technical problems, soft technical problems, and pedagogical problems. Informed by these, we believe that the realization of ubiquitous learning requires attention to the construction of technical environment (i.e., issues related to the basic supportive environment and learning terminals), the construction of learning resources, the construction of the support service system, and the construction of the learning community (i.e., issues related to learners, facilitators, and pedagogy).

Building a ubiquitous learning technology environment

The construction of a ubiquitous learning environment is the foundation and guarantee for the successful implementation of ubiquitous learning. In order to effectively support ubiquitous learning, it is necessary to build a technical environment for learners to use any terminal device for learning anytime, anywhere, and to provide learners with various technical means, mainly including a basic ubiquitous environment and ubiquitous learning terminal equipment (Chen and Zhang 2011).

The basic environment provides basic technical support including network, computing, storage, platform, etc. for ubiquitous learning. It is the basic element that constitutes the ubiquitous learning environment. The ubiquitous Internet, with the help of new-generation information technologies such as the Internet of Things, education cloud, big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and 5G, etc., together with satellite mobile communication network and ground mobile communication network, forms a comprehensive network environment with three-dimensional communication and seamless global coverage, which extends the network to all spaces where people live and learn. At the same time, learning resources and learning support services adopt the cloud storage mode and are together stored in the “Cloud”. This can provide learners with a technical environment that allows them to use any terminal device for learning anytime and anywhere to support their ubiquitous learning needs. Therefore, in the wave of rapidly developing information technology, the relevant departments need to accelerate the construction of a network support environment that enables high-speed access and multi-network interoperability, so that the ubiquitous Internet and cloud technology can be extended to people’s living and learning spaces, and the development and implementation of ubiquitous learning can be promoted.

At the same time, ubiquitous learning depends on the support of various learning terminal devices. With the development of technologies such as computers, mobile networks, and sensors, various learning terminals like smartphones, tablet computers, notebook computers, mobile TVs, and flat TVs appeared. In the ubiquitous learning environment, the learning terminal is responsible for communicating with the cloud computing center, invoking various learning services needed, connecting and sharing information with each other, receiving response data, and adaptively presenting learning resources. It is a tool used by learners to learn and interact which is easy to access, various in nature, and simple to apply. Therefore, relevant departments need to accelerate the development and upgrade of intelligent mobile terminals that support learning interaction, so that mobile terminals can intelligently identify the environmental information of the learner, the physical status information of the learner, and the introductory information of real objects, etc., so as to better meet their learning requirements, provide learners with seamless learning opportunities, enable them to access resources and interact at any time, extend their learning time, and enhance their learning effect.

Building up ubiquitous learning resources

In the ubiquitous learning environment, learning resources are the bridge connecting learners and learning behaviors. It should be able to perceive different learning situations, to analyze, construct, and recommend services for social knowledge networks, and to perceive and record the evolution of knowledge. And it can be dynamically and adaptively aggregated according to the needs of learners (Yu et al. 2021). The learning resources with openness and adaptability should be jointly built and shared to meet the diverse and bite-sized learning needs of ubiquitous learners.

New information technology has profoundly changed the way human learn. The emergence of learning styles also brings about massive needs for learning. Thus, more diversified high-quality learning resources should be built to meet the massive and diversified learning needs of learners. At the same time, it’s also a new learning mode by which learners conduct bite-sized learning according to their own needs with the help of the Internet. This requires the construction of learning resources that can meet the learner’s needs of personalized learning content and using a fragmented learning time. On the one hand, the construction of learning resources should be more bite-sized, video-based, networked, and mobile to meet the personalized learning needs of learners from all walks of life and different fields. On the other hand, in order to gradually make ubiquitous learning the mainstream learning mode, miniaturized learning resources that are suitable for mobile terminals need to be built to adapt to the learner’s bite-sized learning time and personalized learning needs.

Providing ubiquitous learning support services

Ubiquitous learning is a kind of self-directed learning which largely relies on students’ learning motivation, self-awareness, and self-control to monitor and manage the entire learning process. An important factor for the success of ubiquitous learning is to build a support network for learners and provide comprehensive, sufficient, effective, and personalized support services (Chen 2011).

The learner is the core element in the learning support service system. Services such as technical environment services, learning resource services, intelligent tutoring services, and learning community services all exist because of students’ self-learning. Therefore, appropriate learning support services should be provided according to the specific context of learners to meet the different learning needs of different learners in different periods. In terms of technical environment services, artificial intelligence technology should be used to improve the learning environment and change the standardized support services so that data can be used by learners through the two-way or multi-way communication to enhance learners’ learning. In terms of learning resource services, learning support should be provided that is suitable for learners according to their learning needs and content, provide personalized learning content services, flexible information resource services, and a network environment that supports high-speed retrieval to meet the diverse learning needs of students. In terms of intelligent tutoring services, in order to provide learners with the most helpful services, context-aware devices can be used to perceive and analyze some information about the learner or the surrounding environment, can automatically recommend suitable learning objectives, as well as provide the optimized path to the learner according to internal factors such as learning ability and learning style. In terms of learning community services, in order to strengthen learners’ common progress in cooperation, collaborative learning can be carried out, namely, helping learners to find learning partners or someone who is willing to interact, or by creating learning communities according to the learners’ learning style, learning ability, knowledge level, and other factors.

Build a ubiquitous learning community

In the ubiquitous learning environment, the construction of the technical environment and learning resources ensures the physical aspects of education technology for the development of ubiquitous learning and lays the foundation for the establishment of a social mechanism for learning. The construction of the learning community and the transformation of its concepts are also particularly important (Chen and Zhang 2011).

The learner is the subject. The intelligent space constructed by the information space and the physical space is the object, and the learning procedure is the interaction between the subject and the object. First of all, learners should fully realize their own learning subject status, change their approach from passive learning to active learning, choose learning content independently and formulate suitable study plans according to their own cognitive level, personality characteristics and learning ability, self-learning needs, multiple learning resources and other conditions. Secondly, learners should improve their own abilities, such as the ability to identify and process information, the ability to think about problems, the ability to actively explore and analyze problems from multiple perspectives, and improve self-directness and openness.

The establishment of the ubiquitous learning community also depends on the guidance of the facilitators. On the one hand, in the ubiquitous learning environment, facilitators need to re-examine their roles, play the role of building learning resources, guide and supervise students’ learning. According to the learners’ cognitive level and learning needs, facilitators should guide learners to actively and effectively use learning resources, actively construct knowledge, and provide timely support and help through reasonable guidance to learners. On the other hand, facilitators are supposed to establish a lifelong learning awareness, make full use of modern information communication technology, and continuously explore new pedagogies such as collaborative learning and online learning by participating in relevant skills training, so as to improve their professional skills, transform theoretical achievements into practical applications, and form a virtuous circle. Learners and facilitators integrate into the community through sharing, communication, negotiation, active participation, and collaboration, etc. They gradually form common goals, consciousness, identities and a sense of meaning, and finally obtain learning results through a sense of belonging, and achieve excellence in collaboration in the learning community.

7.3.3 The Trend of Future Development of Ubiquitous Learning

With the development of ubiquitous computing and wireless communication technology, the use of portable mobile devices has become more and more frequent and pervasive, which has made ubiquitous learning more appealing to learners.

Intelligent and ubiquitous learning environment

In recent years, the construction of ubiquitous learning environments has become more intelligent due to the strong technical support from artificial intelligence technologies such as big data, semantic analysis, and cloud computing etc. The intelligent ubiquitous learning environment, with the main purpose of acquiring knowledge, is the direct interface for learners to learn through the ubiquitous network. It has various forms, rich functions, and has characteristics of intelligence, simplicity and connectivity.

The ubiquitous learning environment supported by big data, artificial intelligence and VR environments will become a learning environment in line with “Internet+”. Breaking away from traditional classrooms, learners can use mobile devices to master content knowledge, and learn at any time any place in any situation. Ubiquitous learning can not only help learners solve problems in any terminal-supported learning environment, but also enable learners to reflect on the learning process, which is very conducive for personalized development of learners.

Diversified and ecological learning resources

As a link between learners and learning behaviors, learning resources are the key species for building an educational ecosystem. They are living organisms that can continuously evolve and develop themselves, with ecological attributes such as adaptability, integrity, openness, and evolution. In the future, the construction of learning resources tend to be more ecological and agile, so that they can actively adapt to the development and changes of other species (learners, learning tools or platforms), and highlight their dynamic connections and interactions with another key species (learners) to promote its evolution and development (Yang and Yu 2013).

In the ubiquitous learning environment, learners come from different industries and fields, and their needs for learning resources are also diverse. Many learners use their fragmented time to engage in bite-sized learning, which makes learning resources adapt to learners’ customized learning needs. In the face of massive and scattered learning needs, the construction of learning resources is also progressing towards diversification, and at the same time, it increasingly reflects its ecological attributes.

Specifically, the content of ecological learning resources should be open and evolvable, allowing more people to create and edit them to generate dynamic learning resources. In addition, the future learning resource aggregation model should also develop in a dynamic and adaptive direction, which requires that the most suitable learning resources can be dynamically aggregated according to the needs of learners to solve problems in a specific learning context to promote personalized learning. The learning resources develop in the direction towards progressing multi-adaptation and dynamic structure attributes. Moreover, ubiquitous learning is the process of sharing and building individual cognitive networks and social cognitive networks. In the future, the construction of learning resources should maximally integrate the cognitive intelligence of the learner community, and then form a cognitive network that includes physical and human resources that can dynamically evolve and self-develop (Yu and Chen 2011).

Personalized and contextualized learning support

Ubiquitous learning meets the diverse needs of learners. Therefore, effort should be made to provide learners with timely, efficient, effective, and human-centered learning support to improve their learning and meet their personalized needs. This requires the design of ubiquitous learning support to be personalized and contextualized (Dong et al. 2015). The personalization and contextualization of ubiquitous learning support are mainly reflected in three aspects. First, in terms of service content, learning support is evolving towards learner-centered personalized learning with the deepening of the “human-centered” concept and the development of intelligent technology. Since ubiquitous learning is essentially a kind of on-demand learning (just in case), we need to provide different learning services according to different learning contexts to enhance their learning experiences. Second, in terms of support services, the focus shifts from asynchronous support and further extends to include both synchronous and asynchronous support. With the development of the ‘Internet + education’ and artificial intelligence education in recent years, more forms of interaction have emerged. Real-time synchronous support services can achieve point-to-point online Q&A and instant feedback, and are also conducive to the formation of significant teacher-student and student–student interactions. With the addition of emerging technologies, their interactions will become more personalized and contextualized in the future (Sun and Chen 2021).

The learning support service is an organic system with many elements coexisting. The optimal function of the system can be brought into play only by the integration and coordination among the elements. The intelligent and ubiquitous learning environment demands more advanced learning support services. Therefore, the ubiquitous learning support service will turn out to be more completer and more comprehensive in the future. Not only do student guidance, learning resources, and learning strategies require personalized and contextualized services, but their technical and emotional supports should also be more comprehensive.

More open and social ubiquitous learning community

A learning community is a learning team composed of learners, facilitators, and other people with a clear sense of team belonging, common aspirations and extensive communication opportunities. This learning team shares common goals, communicate and engaged in activities with each other (Shi and Liu 2008). Technologies provide new opportunities for the ubiquitous learning community by making it more open and social.

The open nature of a ubiquitous learning community is manifested in the openness of objects, resources, and learning methods. First of all, the participant of the ubiquitous learning community are not only students but also adult learners with different profile. Any people can use mobile devices at hand to learn anytime anywhere. Additionally, in the open ubiquitous learning community, various learning resources are integrated to meet the diverse needs of learners who use the fragmented time for learning, and thereby realize the opening and sharing of high-quality learning resources. The openness, personalization, and interaction of community are further strengthened by the open learning resources. Learners can customize their own learning path according to their individual needs. Ultimately, the learning model has shifted from the traditional “teacher-centric” to a “learner-centered” open blended learning style. The open ubiquitous learning community has shaped the original closed school structure by enabling an open learning approach for learners. learners can quickly access various resources they need on various platforms.

The social nature of the ubiquitous learning community is reflected in two aspects: the formation of the social cognitive network, and the wide application of various social software. With its open objects and resources, the ubiquitous learning community can better promote the formation of individual an social cognitive networks of learners. In the process of human–human and human–computer interaction, the interactive network between knowledge and human is formed. The essence of social platform is participation and sharing with everyone’s voice to be heard. Therefore, social software plays a positive role in promoting the expansion of interpersonal communication in the real world. The social software augment learners’ participation in the ubiquitous learning communities.

7.4 Rethinking Education and Building Educational Ecosystem

The emerging technologies centered on the Internet not only change the teaching space, learning resources and learning strategies, but also make researchers and practitioners rethink about the nature education and how to reconfigure the higher education ecosystem to respond to the changing education landscape. For example, researchers and practitioners are rethinking what to teach and learn in the digital era, and how to teach and learn better empowered by technologies. The education system need to change to respond better to the society need. In 2022, the main work of the Ministry of Education of China is to implement the strategic initiative of education digitalization, to actively develop “Internet Plus Education”, and to accelerate digital transformation and the intelligent upgrading of education. Strategic initiatives of implementing education digitization are a national response to these changes and development.

7.4.1 Knowledge: From Elaborative Symbolic Information to Human Intelligence of the Whole Society

The most important thing brought by emerging technologies is that the connotation of knowledge has changed—from refined symbolic information to human intelligence of the whole society (Chen et al. 2019).

Knowledge in school education is a refined human intelligence. In order to better disseminate knowledge through schools, human beings abstract, structure, logicalize and characterize intelligence and wisdom, and solidify it in books. The knowledge at this point is explanatory and constructive. The Internet assembles and shares various types of human intelligence and wisdom. In the digital era, the connotation of knowledge, as well as its form, creation, and modes of transmission, has changed. And a new type of knowledge—growth knowledge, has been generated. Relying solely on explanatory and constructive knowledge can no longer adapt to aid social development, especially as technology changes rapidly. And thus, growth knowledge emerged. The Internet has enriched the connotation and types of knowledge. It not only includes the traditional knowledge perspectives which is based on linear static knowledge, abstract knowledge about principles, disciplinary system knowledge, and prescribed common knowledge, but also covers dynamic network knowledge, situational operation knowledge, comprehensive fragmented knowledge, and networked knowledge (Chen 2020). As UNESCO redefines knowledge in its report “Rethinking Education: A Conceptual Shift Towards a ‘Global Common Good’: “Knowledge can be understood broadly as information, understanding, skills, values, and attitudes acquired through learning” (UNESCO 2017). At the same time, knowledge creation shows respect towards individual values and attention towards the individual experience of practitioners; knowledge selection put an emphasis on meeting individual needs and promoting individual development. The smaller the granularity of knowledge is, the more flexible the combined application will be, and also the stronger the targeted problem-solving ability will be (Wang and Chen 2020).

The storage of knowledge is networked and multimodal. Knowledge exists in multimodal carriers in various forms, and it has stronger capabilities of absorption, integration, storage, and application. Therefore, it can support a faster dissemination speed, has stronger communication, a wider audience, and a more personalized expression (Chen et al. 2019). Knowledge is no longer a static phenomenon, but a network phenomenon. The creation of knowledge is no longer at the individual level, but at collective community level. In the past, human beings first crated knowledge and then disseminated it; today, knowledge production and dissemination are used in the same process in the Internet environment. In the past, creators and disseminators were not the same group; today, producers are communicators and beneficiaries at the same time. This is a unique phenomenon that occurs in the Internet environment. The way of appreciating personal knowledge has changed accordingly (Chen 2020).

7.4.2 Learning Theory: Learning is a Process of Connecting Specialized Nodes and Information Sources

How should students be facilitated to face and adapt to the changes that have occurred in the connotation, creation and dissemination of knowledge, and what kind of learning is valuable? A learning theory called connectivism is proposed to explain the open and complex digital era. It is a new and noteworthy theory which considers learning as a process of establishing connections between the internal neural network of human beings, the conceptual network of human society, and the external social network (Siemens 2005), and connectivity is an important way of learning. Learning is not only about learning from the experience of others and digesting knowledge, but also a process of creating knowledge and connecting specialized nodes or information sources, as shown in the figure below. Learning may also exist in non-human applications, and the ability to learn is more important than the knowledge that has been currently acquired. The goal of learning is to grow knowledge based on creation and to achieve a flow of knowledge. The process of learning is no longer unidirectional and linear, but rather a continuous process of building pipelines and maintaining information flowing smoothly within them (Siemens 2012; Downes 2012). Significant learning takes place when a person establishes connection with valuable sources of information and shares information on an ongoing basis.

The learning theories are evolving with the development of digital learning. The purpose of teaching is to help students establish connections with valuable information sources, and build an ecological network that promotes connectivity. In this process, individuals, organizations and the external world interact and develop together. As topics are constantly being generated, core concepts gradually emerge, giving a polycentric character to the social network relationship of the course, and active learners gradually acquire new competencies, such as communication, interaction, integration, and decision making. In addition to the traditional face-to-face learning and lecture-based learning, there is a need for more diverse, flexible and open learning formats and also more effective and customized pedagogies, so as to achieve connectivity for students and respond to the society need. For example, “Internet Plus Education”, a group collaborative online community-based course was developed by the National Engineering Laboratory for Cyberlearning and Intelligent Technology in Beijing Normal University. Aiming of the nexus between theory and practice, the course is based on open and cutting-edge learning themes, designed with socialized and interactive learning activities, provides guided and generative learning resources, and offers personalized and processive learning support. It helps students achieve knowledge creation and supports the development of connectivity, and cultivates their higher-level competencies such as collaboration, critical innovation, integration, and decision making.

7.4.3 Education Systems: From Linear to Open and Complex Dynamic Systems

In the past, education was understood to involve a linear relationship, while the new type of education supported by technologies has become a complex system, with the relationship in teaching changing from a simple linear one to a nonlinear one (Xu and Chen 2021). The relationship also presents the characteristics of a complex network: self-organization, emergence and uncertainty (Guo et al. 2020). The complex system refers to a dynamic nonlinear system with a hierarchical structure which composes of components or subjects that follow basic operating rules and have interactive relationships. This kind of complex system is a new research perspective and approach to understand the world (Chen and Xu 2021). With the development of the technologies and the emergence of more open, equal and interconnected learning spaces, great changes can be witnessed in the education system, various teaching elements, as well as the interaction between them. The simple linear interaction of “one-to-one, one-to-many” in the original teaching and learning process has been transformed into a complex interaction of “many-to-many”, which intensifies uncertainty, disorder, and multi-level approaches to teaching and learning behavior. The interaction between components and agents will lead to the generation of complex systems, and the relationship between teaching and learning will be more complex.

The complexity of the system is reflected in two aspects: collective and individual, i.e., the complexity of collective behavior (symbolic representations, formal systems, and sociocultural practices) and the complexity of the interactive behavior of individuals or subjects in the system. The collective complexity of the entire system involves five aspects: components and agents, system level, self-organization, initial value sensitivity and nonlinearity, and emergence. The complexity of independent agents in the system is reflected in three aspects: parallelism, conditional triggering, adaptation and evolution (Jacobson et al. 2018). From the complex perspective of online teaching and learning, Chen et al., (2021) explored the complexity under the new knowledge concept of “Internet Plus Education”—online learning based on student–student interaction. As a result, ten characteristics were identified: seven characteristics can be observed from the perspective of the complexity of collective behavior, namely the diversification and heterogeneity of participating subjects, a polycentric network structure formed by self-organization, the formation of network status and identity through dialogue, the connection between the level and quality of initial interactions with later learning effects, the emergence of collective knowledge and wisdom, nonlinear interaction between within and between the groups, and the continuous exchange of elements with the external environment. Three characteristics can be observed at the individual level, namely parallel processing of interactive information, a positive correlation between network status and learning effects, continuous adaptation, and the evolution of individual and collective networks.

The characteristics of the complexity shows that new education supported by the Internet is different from traditional school education (Chen 2018). Researchers and practitioners need to shift from traditional linear thinking perspectives to nonlinear thinking in order to understand the nature education in the new era. The technology can record the behavior of teaching and learning processes in the form of data, which makes it possible for humans to understand teaching and learning from Science of Learning perspectives. It is necessary to transform and update the educational research paradigm and develop technology enhanced pedagogy.

7.4.4 New Forms of Education: Future Schools and Beyond

Many new educational forms and educational service providers emerged in the past decade. In the era of “Internet+”, a new form of university that does not adhere to the traditional concept of education has emerged. It uses Internet thinking and technologies to transform the organizational system and service model of higher education.

As a university innovation in the digital age, Minerva University is “a world university without walls” (Wang and Wang 2015), with four-year undergraduate studies distributed in seven major cities around the world, including San Francisco, Hong Kong, Mumbai, London, etc., the whole city is their campus. By collaborating with local universities, research institutes, and companies, schools are no longer the only place for students to acquire knowledge. Students can have access to the world-class libraries and laboratories, etc. The university makes use of all excellent social resources to run schools openly and focus on curriculum development and attracting quality faculty members (Shang et al. 2017). The structural innovation of the university organizational system has been realized. At present, residential education is the mainstream education model for higher education which relies on on-campus resources, adopts standardized content, extensive supply units, and face-to-face teaching as the main mode of learning. This learning model is difficult to meet the needs of students for high-quality, flexible and personalized education. The new mode of learning supported by technologies provides a solution for tackling current problems in colleges and universities to meet the diverse learning needs of students, and to cultivate talents who adapt to the information society.

In the “Internet+” era, the provider of educational resources and services for a university will no longer be one university but will move towards a new pattern of coordinated provider by multiple entities such as governments, universities, and enterprises. On the one hand, universities can collaborate to exchange high-quality resources across campuses, schools, and regions, providing students with more choices, meeting students’ diverse educational needs, and providing support for the growth of interdisciplinary innovative talents. On the other hand, colleges and universities can actively explore an education model which break down the barriers between knowledge, technology, and industries by allowing or even encouraging enterprises and alumni entering the schools, and promoting the integrated research and development in educational innovations. Various stakeholders such as the government and enterprises can be involved in providing educational services, enhancing students’ practical and innovation competencies through diversified and open practical activities, and building universities into scientific and technological innovative clusters (Liu 2021).

Therefore, the emergence of new forms of education inform us the following: we should build an open educational organization system and pay attention to the integration of education and society since the public education system of schools and the whole society can provide services for human development. Not only the existing self-built resources, but also the whole society contains rich educational resources, and a new mechanism for co-construction and sharing can be built, so that various stakeholders have the opportunity to participate in creation, sharing, selection, and recommendation. It is necessary to shift from supplier-driven education services to user-driven education services by connect various providers and users and realizing cross-border “co-creation, sharing, and co-governance”. The educational organization system should create a new connected ecology through continuous reconstruction, development, iteration and evolution, so that higher education can serve the needs of students and society.

7.4.5 Learning System: Building a Flexible Lifelong Learning System

With the development of new-generation technologies, the needs for lifelong learning and the evolution of educational service systems have expanded from the classroom and school scenarios to the entire society (Chen 2018). Schools and society will also be deeply integrated, which demands a complete system to consolidate social resources, collaborate with the society and serve the human development.

The faculty and the resource are insufficient to meet the needs of talent training in the traditional higher education system. In fact, the society contains much more resources. At present, there have been many practical explorations on resource integration platforms. Even though the models of these platforms are different, they all organize and integrate the development and application of instructional and teaching resources generated by the society. There is an urgent need to coordinate these resources and make them available openly to the community and society so that all learners can have access to the high-quality instructional resources. In the long run, it is necessary to establish a quality assurance system to identify the level of social resources, which facilitates the schools to make better choices. As traditional higher education does not yet recognize certificates and diplomas of adult education, and employers to some extent discriminate against adult education certificates and diplomas. It is difficult for students to get recognition on their personal learning experiences and outcomes, such as taking off-campus online courses, vocational certificates, competition awards etc.

We should build an institutional mechanism for flexible lifelong learning: Firstly, we need to establish a lifelong learning credential framework which recognizes the learner’s learning experiences and outcomes obtained through formal and informal education, such as degrees, diplomas, industry training certificates, skill level certificates, professional qualifications and certificates, MOOC Certificates, and various achievements (innovation and entrepreneurship, scientific research, cultural heritage, and professional awards, etc.). Secondly, we need to establish the education quality assurance system which can formulate national criteria and standards for various types of education at all levels which. In addition, it is necessary to explore and establish an operation mechanism to clearly figure out the relationship among state power, academic authority, and market power, to actively exert and aptly restrain the role boundaries of different entities, to clarify rules and procedures to facilitate labor division, collaboration, and liaison among them, and to pay special attention to strengthen and optimize the role of third-party institutions. Thirdly, we need to establish learners’ personal learning portfolio to record, and store their learning experience and achievements. In this system, learning experiences and outcomes can be tracked, queried, transferred, and monitored.

John Dewey (1916) stated a hundred years ago about the educational reform in the United States: “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow”. To borrow his sentence, “If we still use yesterday’s educational ideas and concepts to educate today’s students, even if we apply the new Internet-centered technology very well, skillfully, and dazzlingly, we will not be able to cultivate future-ready innovative talents” (Chen 2020). The impact of the emerging technologies on education is not only about the pedagogical innovation supported by technology, but also amount the renewal of educational philosophy and theories, and the reconstruction of the educational ecosystem.

The higher education system is transforming in various aspects, including educational philosophy and theories, approaches and methods, educational forms and systems. It brings the integration of on-campus and off-campus, face-to-face and online education, and formal and informal education. It’s a highly open and interconnected new educational ecosystem that is greatly integrated with society. At present, the purpose of China’s strategic implementation of education digitization actions and the development of “Internet Plus Education” is to build a new higher education system that is compatible with the information age.