On September 6, 2025, the National Engineering Research Center for Educational Big Data (NERC-EBD; i.e. NERCEL) organized a customized orientation lecture for the incoming 2025 graduate students. The event is designed to help first-year graduate students fully understand disciplinary development directions, research platform resources, and the cultivation framework. This could effectively enable them to progressively integrate into the new academic environment and help them to outline their future growth pathways. Mr. Helin Wu, Deputy Director of NERCEL and NERC-EBD, and Zimo Shi, Teaching Secretary, delivered keynote presentations and shared insights respectively.

Mr. Wu systematically introduced the development journey, platform positioning, and achievements of the Center under the theme “Empowering Education, Creating an Intelligent Future”. He noted that since its inception in 2004, the Center has achieved a series of original outcomes in fields such as AI in education, educational big data, and smart learning environments over these two decades, thereby continuously leading domestic disciplinary progress. Featured as national-level research platforms, the Center actively contributes to major national scientific and technological tasks and functions as the key component of the country’s strategic scientific and technological force.

He continued to emphasize that the Center adheres to a twin-drive mechanism of “national strategic orientation + interdisciplinary integration” in order to build a full-chain innovation framework that spans “fundamental research - technical breakthroughs - achievement transformation - industrial demonstration”. This effort advances an establishment of a globally influential hub for intelligent education research and talent cultivation. Mr. Wu also encouraged students to try their best to adapt to the learning requirements of the degree as soon as possible. In this way, they could better manage their time wisely, learn humbly from experienced supervisors, proactively engage with academic cutting-edge topics, actively participate in research projects, hone their skills through practice, and strive to grow into top-tier talents with an international perspective and innovative capabilities.

Subsequently, Zimo Shi, using the 2025 master’s student cultivation handbook as the support, provided a detailed overview of key milestones throughout the graduate study journey. He clarified important aspects such as supervisor selection, study plan formulation, curriculum practice, and dissertation requirements, with particular emphasis on the dual-selection mechanism for supervisors, academic activities, dissertation proposal , and the procedures for approval.

During the interactive Q&A session, Mr. Wu patiently addressed several questions raised by the graduate students. He reaffirmed that graduate students, in the new era, should actively seize the opportunities and meet the challenges brought by the development of artificial intelligence, make full use of their time on campus, strengthen their weaknesses while leveraging their strengths, and lay a solid foundation for their future.

At the end of the speech, students were deeply impressed and gained a profound apprciation for the Center’s strong research capabilities and its nurturing academic atmosphere. They affirmed that they would uphold the spirit of “inclusion, innovation, diligence, and perseverance” championed by the faculty to embrace the mission of the times, deeply ploughing into the frontiers of artificial intelligence in education, and strive to write their own distinctive academic chapters.

Editor: Ruye LI   

Reviewer: Xiaoxiao ZHU