During 3-5 December, the 6th International Conference on Learning Cities (ICLC 6), themed Learning Cities at the Forefront of Climate Action, was held in Jubail, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Zheng Yihui, Vice President of Shanghai Open University, was invited to deliver a keynote speech titled Digital Inclusion, Wisdom for the Aged: Shanghai's Promotion of an Elderly-Friendly Society through the Digitalization of Elderly Education at the conference's session on Bridging the Digital Divide in Learning Cities.
This conference gathered representatives from learning cities around the world, policymakers, experts in adult education and lifelong learning, as well as researchers from non-governmental organizations to discuss strategies for addressing climate challenges and promoting cooperation in lifelong learning.
Zheng Yihui, starting from the unique perspective of elderly education, mentioned about the urgency and importance of building a digitally inclusive aging society at the intersection of the digital age and an aging society, emphasizing that the elderly should have equal opportunities and capabilities to master and use digital technology. He pointed out that with the changing population structure and the increasing demand for personalized education among the elderly, elderly education has become a key pathway to achieve this goal. Shanghai has taken a number of innovative measures, such as building an educational network that covers the whole city, using multi-terminal and multi-dimensional digital educational resources to meet the differentiated learning needs of the elderly; creating characteristic learning projects, building real scene experience venues, and providing community-based educational services; encouraging social elderly care institutions and social organizations to participate, and jointly creating a rich learning space for the elderly.
In his speech, Zheng Yihui looked forward to the future of elderly education in Shanghai, especially the application prospects of generative AI in elderly education. He emphasized that the application of digital technology in elderly education will bring innovation to the supply of open educational resources, organizational structure, and evaluation methods.
