Meeting with the South Korean Ministry of Education and the Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS)

In order to participate in the international movement of education promotion and teaching experience exchange, the Ministry of Education (MOE) led a delegation spearheaded by Dr. Bor-Chen Kuo, Executive Secretary of the Digital Learning Enhancement Plan (President of National Taichung University of Education), together with representatives of county and city digital learning promotion offices, to South Korea. The main objective was to learn more about South Korea’s digital learning policies, implementation, and industry-academia cooperation practices. Moreover, members of the delegation wanted to share their experiences with the industry, government, academia, and research institutes of both sides. The delegation especially learned from South Korea’s policies on digital textbooks, revision of curriculum, and the introduction of AI digital textbooks. South Korea, on the other hand, was interested in the fact that Taiwan has already built a digital learning platform and developed free digital content, subsidized county and city schools to purchase digital content and teaching software, planned a complete teacher training framework, utilized big data analysis in education as a tool for the diagnosis of learning and the evaluation of learning effectiveness, introduced an AI learning partner into the Adoptive Learning website, and, integrated AI into primary and junior high school teaching and learning. The results achieved following the promotion of the aforementioned initiatives have been astonishing.
In addition to meeting with the South Korean Ministry of Education, the Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS), the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education and its Seoul Education Research and Information Institute, and the Seoul Gangseo Yangcheon District Office of Education to exchange policies on digital learning, the exchange also took place at the Tekville Educational Technology Service, a teacher training organization in South Korea, and an educational institution that publishes educational materials in South Korea. The delegation also visited primary and junior high schools to conduct on-site observation sessions on digital teaching and learning.
In 2022, South Korea announced a Revised Curriculum with the vision of “Education for all”. In 2023, South Korea unveiled the “AI Digital Textbook Promotion Plan”, aiming to gradually introduce AI digital textbooks from 2025 onwards. In 2024, the National Assembly also approved the investment of 533.3 billion won to promote the “Plan for Digital-based Education Innovation”, to promote Future School 2.0, and promote it year by year until 2027 to achieve the target of 1:1 configuration of carriers from primary third grade to high school senior year.
The MOE is actively building a learning environment for digital and AI education. In 2017, it launched the MOE’s digital learning platform, “Taiwan Adaptive Learning Platform (TALP),” which combined curriculum content and AI technology to plan “learning paths” that were appropriate for individual students, allowing for a more comprehensive and adaptive approach to teaching. From 2022 to 2025, the MOE will invest a total of 20 billion NT dollars in promoting the “Digital Learning Enhancement Plan.” The funding from the plan will be used to enhance digital content, provide subsidies for mobile carriers and network bandwidth, and to carry out comprehensive database analytics projects related to education. In 2023, the program incorporated ChatGPT technology to provide subject-area and general-purpose learning robots from the TALP, as well as English pronunciation, composition, and conversation modules from Cool English to guide students in building their learning scaffolds.
Digital learning and AI-related technologies are important topics for the next curriculum research. Executive Secretary Dr. Bor-Chen Kuo of the MOE of the Digital Learning Enhancement Plan said that the MOE will continue to initiate exchanges and cooperation with other countries on digital learning. Furthermore, the MOE will draw on the latest international experiences and practices in promoting digital learning and the use of AI technologies by inviting international experts to Taiwan. The MOE will plan the policies of digital education in Taiwan and build a public-private partnership to synchronize the development of personalized digital education around the globe.