Education forum highlights cross-disciplinary collaboration in learning

The 2024 Yidan Education Forum, themed “Building the Future Learning Ecosystem Through Cross-disciplinary Design,” was held in Qianhai, Shenzhen on Dec. 14.

The 2024 Yidan Education Forum was held in Qianhai, Shenzhen on Dec. 14. Photos courtesy of the event organizer

The forum invited scholars, industry experts, educators, and enterprise representatives from the Chinese mainland, China’s Hong Kong, China’s Macao, Singapore, the United States, and other regions to share with on-site and online attendees insights into cross-disciplinary collaboration on education in the era of artificial intelligence (AI).

In his opening speech, Yu Shengquan, Executive Director of the Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education at Beijing Normal University and Director of the Joint Laboratory for Mobile Learning by the Ministry of Education and China Mobile Communications Corporation, envisioned a new ecosystem of the future school in the intelligence age.

Yu Shengquan, Executive Director of the Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education at Beijing Normal University and Director of the Joint Laboratory for Mobile Learning by the Ministry of Education and China Mobile Communications Corporation, delivers a speech at the forum.

According to Yu, the opportunities and challenges brought by AI will bring significant changes to future schools. These changes, impacting areas such as school infrastructure, methods of talent development, teaching assessment criteria, and school management, will result in a new ecosystem that further integrates school education and online education to cater to future education needs.

Chris Ruirui Rao, Secretary-General of the Chen Yidan Foundation, shared in her speech about the roles education should play as AI continues to penetrate people’s everyday life.

Chris Ruirui Rao, Secretary-General of the Chen Yidan Foundation, gives a speech at the forum.

From her perspective, how to address the societal and philosophical challenges that have emerged along with the rise of AI should be a focus of future education, and one of the main goals of future education will be training students to utilize AI in a way that expand their intelligence, rather than being replaced by AI.

Speakers take questions from on-site and online attendees at a discussion section.

In a keynote forum and three sub-forums that followed, 13 speakers discussed the possibilities of cross-disciplinary collaboration in education and more diversified learning options.

Wang Chen, professor at Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University and Secretary-General of the Chinese Society of History of Education, presents the forum’s keynote report.

For the third consecutive year, the forum released a keynote report on learners for the future. Following the 2022 report on the value of future education and the 2023 report on basic frameworks for implementing future education, this year’s report, titled “CMYK: The Cross-Boundary Design for Learning by a Future Educational Syntax,” focuses on cross-boundary frameworks for implementing future education.

The Yidan Education Forum, an international education forum organized by the Chen Yidan Foundation and supported by the Yidan Education Research Institute, aims to create a platform for dialogues and exchanges among educators and experts from different walks of life to push the boundaries of innovation in education.

An array of research findings presented at the forum since its launch in 2020 have been published and archived by the National Library of China.

The 2024 Yidan Education Forum was co-organized by the Chen Yidan Foundation and the Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education at Beijing Normal University. It was also supported by the Yidan Education Research Institute and the Tencent IEG Social Value Exploration Center.

The sub-forums were co-organized by the Yidan Prize Foundation, Exploratorium, the Institute for International Affairs, Qianhai of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and the School of Education of City University of Macao.