A Decade of Digital Learning—How a City Grew from Exploration to Maturity: Strategic Lessons as Taipei Enters the AI Era

In 2013, the Taipei City Government Department of Education became the first in the nation to establish a Digital Learning Education Center. Since its founding, the center has actively promoted digital learning—providing digital resources for teachers and students, helping teachers strengthen their digital teaching skills, and developing digital learning courses and platforms. On December 22, the center held a 10th-anniversary appreciation gathering to look back on its efforts and to thank educators from all quarters for their contributions to digital learning over the past decade.

The center's foremost initial goal was to build Taipei City's digital learning education cloud—"Taipei CooC-Cloud." Since going live in 2016, the platform has been widely embraced by teachers and students, drawing more than 142,049,029 views to date and surpassing 1.23 million members. It offers a wealth of digital resources, including 11,843 online learning videos, 43,821 online assessment questions, and 14 electronic databases, and is linked to more than 480,000 e-books from the Taipei Public Library.

Beyond digital resources, the center also offers many online asynchronous and synchronous courses, including cross-school online elective courses for high schools that, for the first time, count toward credit. These courses connect 10 cities and counties and 36 schools, allowing students to take signature courses from different schools. The center has also run diverse digital-learning enrichment and empowerment classes, live exam-review and problem-solving sessions, subject-bridging courses, university experience courses, and self-directed learning activities during winter and summer breaks. These varied online courses and activities aim to boost students' motivation and performance while raising the culture and prevalence of digital learning across Taipei City.

From 2019 to today, the Department of Education has partnered with the Junyi Academy Education Foundation to produce 1,810 animated videos covering mathematics, science, and social studies for elementary, junior high, and high school—a fine example of public-private collaboration working together for education. In 2021, the CooC-Cloud platform was upgraded to build Taipei City's all-in-one parent-teacher-student platform, the CooC App, enabling parents, teachers, and students to manage and access campus services on mobile devices. In 2023, the center partnered with "Hahow" to acquire 70 courses spanning business, design, technology, languages, and lifestyle, offering junior high and vocational/senior high school students a diverse range of course options.

The efforts of the Department of Education and the Taipei City Digital Learning Education Center have earned recognition across the board. Services related to Taipei CooC-Cloud have won numerous awards, including the Information Month Top 100 Innovative Products Award, the IDC Smart City Asia Pacific Awards (SCAPA), and the "Grand Prize" for Outstanding Digital Education and Learning at the WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards. These achievements are owed to the contributions of Taipei City's schools and teachers, as well as the support of parents and students. Chen Chih-Yuan, the current director of the center and principal of Taipei First Girls' High School, said the center's 10th anniversary is a milestone worth celebrating. The center will continue to promote digital learning, making it a normal part of education in Taipei City and an important tool for helping students learn and supporting teachers in their instruction.

Looking ahead, artificial intelligence (AI) has become an important aid for the next generation of learning. The Taipei City Digital Learning Education Center is preparing for the coming decade by planning to enhance its digital learning systems and refine student-centered smart learning environments. The center will advance three flagship services—the "CooC-AI" smart learning platform for elementary and junior high schools, the "CooC ONO/ONE" learning management platform for senior high and vocational schools, and the "CooC+" smart streaming media platform—actively working to provide a richer learning experience for the new generation of students.