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South China Normal University has achieved international recognition, winning an award at the 2025 IIOE Higher Education Digitalisation Pioneer Case Award Ceremony, coordinated by the UNESCO International Centre for Higher Education Innovation (UNESCO ICHEI). The event took place on September 1 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre in Singapore, sponsored by the BGI Group.
SCNU won the glory for its innovative project — a Multi-Platform Collaborative Model, which enables teacher professional development through smart classroom–AI diagnostic ecosystem. With the ecosystem centered on "AI Diagnosis, Research, and Training", a closed-loop system encompassing standards, diagnosis, empowerment, evaluation, and research has been formed. The project not only connects pre-service training, in-service development, and continuing education, enabling data-driven targeted teaching and personalized growth, but also advances collaboration with industry partners so to integrate technology, scenarios, and applications.
Core components of the project include the "Teacher Ability Assistant," an AI-based classroom teaching diagnosis system, the "Teacher Education Intelligent Collaboration Platform" of SCNU (under the Ministry of Education), and the "South China Teachers Online" cloud platform. To date, it has been applied in over 300 educational institutions and administrative bodies across China, serving more than 30,000 teacher training students, postgraduate students, and in-service teachers, and supporting over 600 teacher training programs.
Pilot schools have reported significant improvements in teachers' digital literacy and classroom teaching capabilities, with several achieving top awards in provincial teaching competitions. Additionally, seven teacher training colleges have adopted the platform to establish cross-institutional collaboration mechanisms, fostering a number of joint research initiatives and outcomes, and forming a replicable, scalable demonstration effect.
The award marks international authoritative recognition of SCNU's systematic exploration in the field of digital and intelligent transformation of teacher education. It also provides a Chinese solution that can be referenced for teacher empowerment and educational digital transformation, contributing to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4, and enhancing our school's influence in the international educational digital ecosystem.
The Pioneer Award, themed "IIOE Ecosystem-Driven Promising Practices: Empowering Workforce, Innovation, and Collaboration," focuses on key areas such as enhancing the digital and AI capabilities of higher education faculty, advancing the localized empowerment of national centers, promoting teaching innovation through smart classrooms, and deepening industry-academia collaboration.
This year's selection attracted 95 applications from 29 countries, with 22 outstanding cases selected for recognition. Representatives from universities and enterprises worldwide gathered at the awards ceremony to share experiences and discuss cooperation.
Source from SCNU News Center
Translated by Yu Kaixi, Tang Ying
Proofread by Edwin Baak
Edited by Li Jianru
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