On April 10, the “Co-constructing a global ecosystem for higher education digital transformation” – a three-year developmental report published by the International Institute of Online Education (IIOE), was compiled and released by the International Center for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI).

Qian TANG, Former Assistant Director-General for Education of UNESCO; Yidan CHEN, Core Founder of Tencent, Founder of the Tencent Charity Foundation, Founder of Yidan Prize and Wuhan College; Changwei Qin, Secretary General of the National Commission of China for UNESCO; Shahbaz Khan, Director of UNESCO Beijing Office; Peter Wells, Chief of Education at UNESCO Harare Office, Former Chief of Higher Education Section at UNESCO; members of the current and previous IIOE rotating presidency units from the Universiti Putra Malaysia, University of Nairobi, University of Engineering and Technology (Lahore, Pakistan), and Ain Shams University (Egypt); along with IIOE national centres and partners, representatives of IIOE partner HEIs, and associated industries supported the preparation of the report.

The report was released in six languages: Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic.

The report summarized the experience and achievements of IIOE by introducing the development of IIOE, the empowerment of teachers to improve digital teaching and learning capabilities, the practical experience of capacity building of higher education workforce, the facilitation of software and hardware systems by smart classrooms, the IIOE quality assurance, IIOE’s national center, and further explore the future of digital transformation of global higher education through the analysis of experience and challenges.

It systematically summarized the needs of higher education institutions in IIOE developing countries for digital transformation, through the “extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits” transnational, cross-sector public-private partnerships, built an international public learning platform that provides public online courses and training, and the systematic empowerment of university teachers’ digital capabilities.

In the future, IIOE will further expand the scale and quality of its work, relying on the advantages of Shenzhen’s information and communication technology (ICT) industry and the digital development experience of Chinese universities represented by SUSTech, so that more teachers can obtain rich and diverse digital development resources and create a new model of multilateral cooperation in a multicultural context.