The Development and Evaluation Mindset of the Smart Campus

The 2017 International Conference on Smart Campus and Exhibition (ICSCE&E) was held at Tamkang University from December 6 to 8. At the event, WisdomGarden showcased its smart-campus platform services and solutions, engaging face-to-face with visiting school principals and administrators, experts and scholars, teachers, and students. WisdomGarden Group Chairman and President of the WisdomGarden Education Research Institute Dr. Michael Cheng was also invited to serve as a discussant at the "Asia-Pacific / Cross-Strait CIO Smart Campus 2020 Forum," where he shared trend observations and key issues around smart campuses and evaluation systems in a two-way exchange with university CIOs and administrators from across the region.

The CIO Smart Campus 2020 Forum opened with Dr. Kuo Ching-hua, CIO of Tamkang University, as moderator, and featured an open, interactive discussion led by three discussants: Dr. Lin Li-chieh, standing director of the Association of e-Learning (AEL); Dr. Michael Cheng, WisdomGarden Group Chairman and President of the WisdomGarden Education Research Institute; and Director Li Yan-li of the Information Technology Center at Renmin University of China. Drawing on smart-campus deployments and real-world cases, Dr. Lin highlighted the key issues universities face in advancing smart campuses across three dimensions—systems, institutional frameworks, and users. Dr. Cheng, working from the international landscape and evolving practice of university evaluation and information technology, laid out a comprehensive evaluation mindset and a concrete framework, inviting the participating CIOs to share their own cases and experiences. Director Li introduced the digitalization initiatives at Renmin University of China and offered practical strategies and ideas for advancing digitalization in higher education.

"Learning platforms and learning analytics" was another focus of the conference. In the themed discussion sessions, Vice Dean Yu Chun-yan of Chuzhou University described how, using co-construction as a foundational concept, TronClass's signature modules—multi-teacher collaborative lesson planning, rapid reuse of learning-activity designs, and real-time sharing of teaching resources—can build regional mechanisms and results for collaborative lesson preparation. Professor Zhu Xue-mei of Nanjing Normal University reflected on the direction of evaluation reform from the perspective of the big-data era. Vice Dean of Academic Affairs Chang Min-chuan of Fu Jen Catholic University spoke from the university's implementation results, sharing how the school has fully advanced TronClass-based flipped teaching and offering concrete strategies for introducing and promoting innovative teaching platforms in higher education. Professor Chung Chih-hung of Tamkang University then shared his experience and explored the issues around learning analytics from the angle of adopting and using an innovative teaching platform.

Beyond the forum and the presentations of teaching-innovation results that brought together university CIOs and scholars from both sides of the Strait, WisdomGarden also demonstrated its integrated product services and individual solutions live at the conference. Throughout the event, a steady stream of university principals and administrators, unit representatives, scholars of education digitalization, cross-disciplinary teachers, and students from various departments came to the booth to exchange ideas and experiences face to face with WisdomGarden. This authentic feedback from the many different roles within the education-innovation field is both an important affirmation of the WisdomGarden team and a positive force driving its continual improvement.