Innovative National Policy to Reduce Information Technology Gap By Associate Professor Dr Chang Yun Fah

In the post-epidemic era, both online learning and traditional teaching will become the choice of educators and, with the application of emerging technologies in education, such as big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, the popularisation of online education will become a trend. Thus, ignoring the role of Information Technology (IT) in transforming education is undoubtedly unwise.

The technology foundations, human nature, and public policy all impact the effectiveness of online learning, particularly in the education environment.

School teachers were mainly responsible for transferring knowledge and skills in the existing physical classroom, where teachers' instruction and students' learning were less dependent on IT. However, online learning is different, as teachers and students rely heavily on IT.

Developed countries with advanced technology and a high level of information technology are better at leveraging the advantages of educational informatisation, and online learning will bring more educational resources and a better learning effect to education.

On the contrary, countries with a poor and low informatisation level have a gap with developed countries, and even in some backward regions, due to the influence of "soft power" such as perceptions and usage skills, educational informatisation cannot reach the same level as developed regions in accelerating education development, which may lead to a new "knowledge divide".

Thus, trying to improve the quality of education through "technology-enhanced education" will only be a paper talk.

With the deepening of IT application in education, the different resources, skills, and construction funding may have an impact on the formation of "digital divide" among students in different schools.

Various situations of IT devices can affect students' information needs satisfaction and competence, and the urban-rural "digital divide".

Especially in the epidemic period, large-scale online teaching and learning reveal the true face of the "digital divide" in urban and rural education.

While informatisation aids bring digital benefits to education, it also expands the digital development differences between urban and rural vocational education to a certain extent.

The differences in the network between urban and rural areas, in family economics of urban and rural students, and the difference in online learning devices in urban and rural schools lead to new educational inequities in the development of digital informatisation in urban and rural education.

Under the background of continuous and deep development of information technology, the use of IT to improve teaching methods and management mode should become the focus of current and future education to raise the efficiency talent and quality of talent development.

However, educators cannot blindly rely upon the education dividend brought by technological progress.

To narrow the "digital divide" in schools, teachers' strength, technical means, teaching resources and management methods to maximise the quality of education and cultivate talents for the society have become the most significant issue.

As such, national macro-control and institutional policies are the effectual guarantees to reduce the "digital divide" in schools.

The state should issue relevant policies mechanisms to provide institutional guarantee for online learning in schools, including various mechanisms for platform services access, process evaluation and supervision, funding guarantee, coordination at all levels, and emergency education management.

In Australia, for example, the Northern Territory Government supports vocational colleges to adapt learning content to meet curriculum requirements, collect evidence of learning flexibly,, develop specific assessment programs to meet assessment requirements, and complete the assessment and evaluation through electronic student record management to ensure equity for all and technical consistency with national policy changes.

Australia, during the epidemic, has also adopted a government-led, policy-supported, multi-party linkage, data-integrated, and resource-sharing approach to fully mobilising multiple subjects such as government, educational institutions, industrial enterprises, and social organisations to participate in crisis response for mutual interests and values, forming a community of vocational education governance, realising resource integration, optimisation and reorganisation, and collaborative innovation within its system, improving the scientific nature of decision-making and the effectiveness of implementation, meeting the interests of the general public under the epidemic, and promoting the science of governance.

China has formed an "Internet" education curriculum to construct and coordinate organisation. At the Central level, a working group was established to develop "Internet+" education policies, norms, and standards.

This is to vigorously promote the development of curriculum resources, the integration of online platforms, and the construction and sharing of resources.

These educational platforms and resources aim to provide national public services, student learning and exchange, teacher teaching and education, college governance and cooperation and interchange, with the ultimate goal of personalised learning, lifelong learning and modernisation of education.

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