The advanced seminar titled "Student Deep Learning and Critical Thinking Cultivation in the AI Era" commenced on Aug 28 at Jianshi county secondary vocational technical school in Enshi, Hubei province.
Co-hosted by the College of Foreign Languages at Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU) and the education bureau of Jianshi county, the program gathered over 300 academic principals, key English teachers, and lesson-prep group leaders from the county's teaching research center and four local high schools.
Feng Guolin, Party secretary of the College of Foreign Languages, and Zhu Qian, vice-dean of the college, attended the opening ceremony.
During the opening remarks, Lei Mingwu, a municipal education official, underscored that artificial intelligence is profoundly reshaping educational ecosystems. He urged educators to embrace technological revolutions while upholding the principle of "thinking first, AI as a tool", fostering students' inquiring minds and reflective awareness to better serve human-centric development.
Following the ceremony, Dong Yu, a professor from HZAU, delivered a keynote lecture spanning deep learning, problem analysis, and human-machine collaborative work and teaching design. Drawing on real-world AI teaching scenarios, Dong systematically outlined implementation pathways for classroom-based critical thinking — encompassing being able to clearly define problems, conceptual analysis, evidence evaluation, and dialectical synthesis — providing teachers with rigorous theoretical grounding and practical utility.
This seminar marks a breakthrough in the collaborative English education quality-enhancement initiative between the university and Jianshi county.
Zhu noted the training elevates local high school educators' digital literacy and critical thinking pedagogy, injecting robust momentum into regional digital transformation and cultivating future-ready, high-order thinking classrooms.