About Modern Educational Technology

Modern Educational Technology

Modern Educational Technology is a Chinese-language monthly journal of educational technology supervised by China's Ministry of Education and hosted by Tsinghua University in Beijing, published by Tsinghua University Press and listed in the press's journal catalogue with ISSN 1009-8097. Its Chinese title is 现代教育技术 (Xiandai Jiaoyu Jishu). It is a CSSCI source journal in education, covering information technology in education, online and distance learning, learning analytics and digital teaching resources. It serves as the official journal of the China Association for Educational Technology and as the academic publication of the Online Education Research Center of the Ministry of Education.

Those two institutional roles define the journal. Educational technology in China is both an academic discipline and a national programme — the informatisation of education — and this journal is simultaneously the discipline's scholarly venue and the programme's academic publication, published monthly from the university that also hosts its online education research centre's work.

Supervision, hosting and official roles

The journal's official About page, carried on Tsinghua University Press's SciOpen platform, states its constitution precisely: Modern Educational Technology is supervised by the Ministry of Education of China and hosted by Tsinghua University; it is indexed in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI); it serves as the official journal of the China Association for Educational Technology and the academic publication of the Online Education Research Center of the Ministry of Education.

Each role connects the journal to a different part of its field. Ministry supervision places it in the national journal system. Tsinghua hosting gives it a university home with deep strength in both education research and technology. The association role makes it the periodical of the discipline's professional society — the body of China's educational technologists. And the Online Education Research Center role ties it to the ministry's own research apparatus for the field in which China, with its vast online learning sector, is a world leader.

Inscriptions and the 2001 public launch

The journal's About page also preserves two founding details of unusual charm for a technical field. The journal's title was inscribed by Professor Hu Dongcheng of Tsinghua University — the calligraphy of its name is a named scholar's work. And in 2001, when the journal obtained its official publication number and began public distribution, the renowned Chinese educator Professor Gu Mingyuan was the first to contribute an inscription for it: "Conduct research in educational technology to promote the modernization of education."

The 2001 date marks the journal's public form: the point at which it received its official publication number (its CN licence) and began open distribution as the monthly known today, with ISSN 1009-8097 recorded in Tsinghua University Press's catalogue. Gu Mingyuan's inscription states the journal's founding creed — research in educational technology as an instrument of educational modernisation — which remains the field's self-understanding in China and the journal's stated frame.

Mission and scope

The journal's stated mission is to ground itself in educational technology, advance academic research, foster professional exchange and serve industry development. Within that mission it covers the various fields of modern educational technology and educational informatisation, providing an academic platform for theoretical research and a communication platform for practical exploration.

Its subject coverage, in the terms of the Chinese discipline, includes information technology in education, online and distance learning, learning analytics and digital teaching resources — and, in the field's broader vocabulary, the design, development, utilisation, evaluation and management of teaching processes and resources through modern information technology. Its own scholarly tradition's classic topics run from multimedia and network technology in teaching, through satellite and broadcast education's successors, to artificial intelligence, virtual reality and the data-driven study of learning. Monthly publication lets the journal follow a field whose technologies turn over faster than those of any other branch of education research.

A field the journal helped define

Modern educational technology in China descends from the "electrified education" (diànhuà jiàoyù) tradition of the early twentieth century — film, radio and later television in teaching — through the computer era to today's educational informatisation. The discipline's Chinese history is one of successive media becoming successive research programmes, and a journal titled Modern Educational Technology, published from Tsinghua with the association's imprimatur, is the discipline's central Chinese periodical through its current, digital phase.

The journal's Tsinghua setting sharpens that role. The university's own scholarship in the field — including work by its continuing and online education researchers on how multimedia, network and satellite technologies transform teaching, and on applying educational technology in continuing education — is characteristic of the research the journal publishes nationally: theory joined to the engineering of actual teaching systems, in a country that operates online education at enormous scale.

CSSCI standing

The journal is indexed as a source journal of the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) — the About page states the fact directly — in the education category. CSSCI status places it among China's leading education journals and makes it a principal venue for scholars in educational technology, a field whose researchers are evaluated within the education discipline's journal hierarchy.

Its dual character helps it hold that position: it is at once an academic journal answerable to scholarly evaluation and an official publication answerable to a professional association and a ministry research centre. Submissions, citations and readership flow from all three constituencies — universities, the association's membership, and the online-education sector the ministry centre studies.

Publishing arrangements

The journal is published monthly in Beijing by Tsinghua University Press, supervised by the Ministry of Education and hosted by Tsinghua University, and listed in the press's journal catalogue under ISSN 1009-8097. Its presence on the press's SciOpen platform gives its contents digital distribution alongside the press's other journals, with the About page there serving as its authoritative English-language self-description.

Monthly frequency — twelve issues a year — is the fastest rhythm among China's major education journals, and it matches the journal's function: a field defined by changing technology cannot wait for quarterly cycles. Its readers need current work on current platforms, tools and data, and the journal's schedule is built to supply it.

Authors and readership

The journal's authors are China's educational technology researchers and practitioners: university scholars in the discipline, instructional designers and online-education specialists, researchers at open universities and distance-education institutions, and the technical community around the China Association for Educational Technology. Its readership spans the same community plus the wider education profession that consumes its findings — teachers, administrators and the digital-learning industry the journal's mission statement explicitly undertakes to serve.

That breadth — theory platform and practice platform in the journal's own twin description — is its signature. A contribution may be a theoretical paper on learning analytics or a practical exploration of a teaching platform, and both belong, because the discipline itself unites scholarship with the building of educational systems.

Place in Chinese education publishing

Among China's education journals, Modern Educational Technology is the specialist title of the technology field: monthly, ministry-supervised, Tsinghua-hosted, association-backed, CSSCI-listed, and devoted to the informatisation of education. Its counterparts treat education's other territories — theory, history, policy, economics; this journal owns the territory where education meets information technology.

Its documented identity is compact and authoritative: ISSN 1009-8097; title inscribed by a Tsinghua professor; public distribution from 2001 under Gu Mingyuan's inscription calling for research in educational technology to promote the modernisation of education. In a country whose education system has digitised at world-leading speed, the journal with that creed, from that university, is one of the essential periodicals of Chinese education.