Smart Education in China and Central & Eastern European Countries (eBook)

This book focuses on the development of smart education in China and some countries of Central and Eastern Europe. A brief discussion on the idea of smart education was given in the introduction chapter, followed by a series of national smart education profiles of eleven countries. In detail, the profile starts with an overview of ICT in Education or smart education in the country and policies of ICT in Education or smart education. Some key features of smart education in each country were discussed with examples of best practices. The profile ends with a description of trends of smart education in the country. Based on the information above, the final chapter presents an analysis among the eleven countries with six major features they presented and concluded the book with suggestions on advancing smart education by three points.

Rongxia Zhuang is an Associate Professor at Beijing Normal University (BNU), China. She has been engaged in research on smart education, smart learning environment, educational technology applications in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), and the development, implementation, and assessment of TVET curriculum.

Dejian Liu is Co-Dean of Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University, China. He is also Senior Engineer, graduated from the University of Kansas, USA and received a Ph.D. degree from Beijing Normal University in 2020. Currently working as Chairman and Executive Director at NetDragon Websoft Holdings, he also serves on the Board of Directors at Fujian TQ Digital, Inc., on the Board at Baidu, Inc., and as a Member of the Standing Committee at Fujian Science Association, and as Vice-Chairman of the Fujian Young Entrepreneur Association. He has received numerous awards, including Business Venture Hero award, Excellent Entrepreneur award, Youth Entrepreneurship Achievement award, and Science and Technology for Young People award.

Demetrios Sampson is a Professor of Digital Systems for Learning and Education at the Department of Digital Systems, University of Piraeus, Greece and the Director of the MSc Program on 'Digital Learning'. He has been director, principal investigator and/or research consultant in 70 Research and Innovation projects with external funding at the range of 16 Million€. He has supervised 180+ honors and postgraduate students to successful completion. He has developed and delivered the first Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on the use of Educational Data Analytics by School Teachers (Analytics for the Classroom Teacher), offered by the edX platform (a Harvard and MIT led global initiative) which has attracted more than 20.000 participants from 180 countries around the world since October 2016. Between 2018-2021, he led an international University-Industry Consortium (Learn2Analyse) that promotes professional development in Educational Data Literacy for Online Education & Training Professionals and Higher Education students, co-funded by the European Commission (Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance Program). He is the co-author of 350 articles in scientific books, journals, and conferences, and the editor of 90+ books, special issues in academic journals and international conference proceedings, with more than 7790 citations (h-index: 41). He has received 10 times Best Paper Award in International Conferences on Learning Technologies. He has been a Keynote/Invited Speaker in 100+ International/National Conferences. He is the recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Service Award (July 2012) and named a Golden Core Member of IEEE Computer Society in recognition of his contribution to the field of Learning Technologies. He is also the recipient of the Golden Nikola Tesla Chain Award of the International Society for Engineering Pedagogy (IGIP) for 'International outstanding achievements in the field of Engineering Pedagogy' (September 2018). 

Danimir Mandic is a Full Professor of Informatics and educational technology at the University of Belgrade in Serbia (from 2002) and a chief of Department of Didactics and Educational Technology. From 2015, he has been Dean at the Faculty of Education - University in Belgrade (Serbia) and a visiting professor in USA, Italy, France and UK. Danimir Mandic has published more than 150 scientific papers and 31 books in the area of Informatics and Educational Technology. He was a leader in three scientific projects: Educational software for students, Interactive multimedia classroom and distance education systems for higher education. He was a leader in scientific project: Evaluation of the Curriculum at the Teacher Training faculties in Serbia using modern technologies and distance education. He is the author of several innovations in education. He created multimedia software for learning informatics, and distance learning software for students. His area of interest is modern educational technology, artificial intelligence and computer science.

Siyi Zou is Vice President in Global Public Sector, Enterprise Business Group, leading global partners and ecosystem development for public sector, and managing all partner relationships and ecosystem development for Huawei global public business. He has strong technical background and extensive experience in ICT, telecommunication and industry. He has been working in Huawei for more than 18 years with regional and global roles as top management and senior business development.

Yu Huang works in Huawei as Director of Education & Healthcare Dept., Global Public Sector, Enterprise Business Group, where he is responsible for developing and promoting education & healthcare ICT solutions in the global market. He has rich industry experience and ICT knowledge. He has been leading and delivering a number of education ICT projects in more than 10 countries. He holds Electronics Engineering Bachelor and MBA Degree from University van Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Years ago he was also invited by European Union as the ICT Expert to participate several EU funded scientific research projects, including FP7's 'Multidisciplinary Future Internet Research & Experimentation' project, and FP7's 'EU-CHINA Future Internet Common Activities and Opportunities' project.

Ronghuai Huang is a Professor in Faculty of Education of Beijing Normal University (BNU), China. He has been engaged in research on smart learning environments, artificial intelligence in education, educational technology as well as knowledge engineering. He serves as Co-Dean of Smart Learning Institute, Director of UNESCO International Rural Educational and Training Centre, and Director of China National Engineering Lab for Cyber learning Intelligent Technology. He is very active in academic events and organizations internationally. In China, he is Committeeman of the Science Subject Expert Committee of the National Textbook Committee, and Expert of MOE AI Innovation Panel. He is also President of The Global Chinese Society for Computers in Education and Vice President of International Association of Smart Learning Environments. For the academic journals and publications, he is Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Smart Learning Environment, Journal of Computers in Education and the book series of Lecture Notes of Educational Technology and Smart Computing and Intelligent. 

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This book focuses on the development of smart education in China and some countries of Central and Eastern Europe. A brief discussion on the idea of smart education was given in the introduction chapter, followed by a series of national smart education profiles of eleven countries. In detail, the profile starts with an overview of ICT in Education or smart education in the country and policies of ICT in Education or smart education. Some key features of smart education in each country were discussed with examples of best practices. The profile ends with a description of trends of smart education in the country. Based on the information above, the final chapter presents an analysis among the eleven countries with six major features they presented and concluded the book with suggestions on advancing smart education by three points.