Português
English"Majestic Taihang, forging the soul of Huaxia; mighty Yellow River, singing the dreams of China..." The school song of Yellow River Transportation College not only conveys this institution—named after the Mother River's legacy—its unwavering commitment to preserving Chinese civilization, but also showcases its determination and ingenuity as Henan Province's only application-oriented undergraduate university focused on transportation talent development. In the new era, the college is boldly exploring the path of educational digitalization and intelligence.
Over the years, Yellow River Transportation College has used DingTalk as its smart office platform, guided by the IT needs of faculty and students, to continuously advance the school's digital transformation. This has led to a comprehensive overhaul of the college's teaching, administration, and services. Through their mobile phones, faculty and students can handle more than 80% of their tasks on the go, truly realizing the school's goal: "Let data move more; let faculty and students run less."
✦First Encounter with DingTalk:
A "Timely Rain" for Information Delivery
In 2015, as digital transformation and the concept of smart campuses were just emerging, Yellow River Transportation College keenly sensed the changing winds in higher education's IT transformation. At that time, the primary challenge facing the college was the timely delivery and confirmation of critical information. Traditional OA office systems were inconvenient for mobile use, and even mass text messages failed to deliver satisfactory results. Moreover, frequent use of text messaging came with significant costs...
Was there a reliable tool that could "cure" this problem once and for all?
To find an answer, Chang Benchao, the teacher responsible for the school's IT infrastructure, began an extensive search for a solution. Finally, his efforts paid off. While browsing a computer magazine in the library, he stumbled upon an introduction to DingTalk. The app's features—such as instant messaging and guaranteed message delivery—seemed tailor-made to solve the college's problems with slow information flow and delayed feedback. DingTalk was exactly what the school needed!
So Chang decided to test DingTalk within his own department. He quickly discovered that DingTalk not only supports unlimited message sending but also provides automatic, real-time delivery confirmations. For users who haven't installed the app, DingTalk can deliver messages via text or voice call. Compared to other tools, DingTalk truly stood out as a "secret weapon" for information delivery—a fitting name: "Ding-Bi-Da" (guaranteed delivery).
As Chang delved deeper into DingTalk, he realized that the platform not only offered convenient and efficient communication capabilities but also provided a rich suite of office applications, including OA approvals, announcements, and Ding Drive. These features complemented the third-party OA system the college was already using. This chance encounter planted the seeds for Yellow River Transportation College's digital transformation journey. Over the next decade, the college migrated its OA system functions onto DingTalk, integrated other smart campus systems with DingTalk, and explored numerous new possibilities based on DingTalk to achieve seamless information flow and refined management practices.
✦Returning from Zhejiang University with New Insights:
As IT initiatives in higher education gained momentum, in 2018, the Henan Provincial Department of Education organized a training program for IT leaders from undergraduate colleges at Zhejiang University. Chang represented the college and attended the session.
Upon his return, Chang immediately reported to the school leadership about the advanced educational IT concepts and experiences he had learned from Zhejiang Province, particularly the "one-visit maximum" reform being implemented by universities in Zhejiang. The school's leadership promptly convened relevant departments for discussion and decided to draw on Zhejiang's experience, adapting it to the college's specific circumstances. By advancing the "one-visit maximum" reform, the college aimed to transform departmental management philosophies, enhance service awareness, and leverage DingTalk as a key tool to enable paperless approvals and bring services closer to the community.
Specifically:
OA Approval Function
The introduction of the OA approval function has greatly simplified the college's approval processes. Whether it's leave requests, expense reimbursements, or procurement matters, applications can be submitted directly on DingTalk, with real-time tracking of approval progress. This saves time for faculty and students while increasing the transparency and fairness of the approval process;
Announcement and Notification Function
The announcement and notification feature enables the college to swiftly deliver various notices and announcements to every faculty member and student. Whether it's an urgent alert or an important event schedule, the information can be pushed to the relevant individuals via DingTalk in the first instance, ensuring timeliness and accuracy;
Ding Drive Function
Ding Drive provides the college with a secure and convenient cloud storage platform. Faculty and students can upload important documents and materials to Ding Drive, accessing and sharing them anytime, anywhere. This not only solves the problems of file loss and difficulty in sharing associated with traditional storage methods but also enhances work efficiency and collaboration;
Other Features
In addition, DingTalk offers a range of other applications, such as group live streaming, work logs, and smart meetings, to meet the diverse needs of the college in different scenarios.
Faculty and students can now easily access services such as personnel file inquiries, meeting room reservations, leave/return requests, access pass applications, equipment repair requests, and scholarship/grant applications—experiencing the true convenience of the "one-visit maximum" approach.
According to the school's "Notice on the Implementation Plan for Advancing the 'One-Visit Maximum' Reform in Administrative Approvals," by the end of July 2020, the college had essentially achieved full online and mobile coverage for more than 70% of administrative tasks, elevating the quality and reputation of the school's services to a new level.
✦DingTalk Shines During the Pandemic
DingTalk Helps the School Navigate the Crisis Smoothly
In nearly a decade of working with DingTalk, Chang has gained profound insights. Compared to other software platforms, DingTalk's value in supporting higher education digitalization can be summed up as "accomplishing big things with little or no money."
At the end of 2019, the sudden outbreak of the pandemic and subsequent campus lockdown caught many universities off guard, highlighting the critical importance of IT infrastructure. Teachers needed to conduct live online classes, students required attendance tracking, and a surge of demands placed unprecedented challenges on teaching and administration—and put the universities' IT achievements to a severe test.
It is reported that to meet the sudden surge in demand for online live teaching, many schools had to urgently purchase servers, expand campus network bandwidth, and deploy dedicated live-streaming platforms, spending millions of yuan.
But at that time, Yellow River Transportation College, thanks to its mature experience with DingTalk, faced the challenge with remarkable composure: "We didn't spend a single penny—we quietly solved many of the pandemic-related issues using DingTalk alone."
During the pandemic, the school needed to quickly launch online teaching activities.
DingTalk's group live-streaming feature became a key pillar of the college's online teaching efforts. Through DingTalk, teachers could effortlessly conduct live lectures and provide online Q&A sessions, while students could watch live classes, submit assignments, and take exams from home via their phones or computers. This not only ensured the smooth continuation of teaching activities but also reduced the risk of gatherings and cross-infection. Meanwhile, DingTalk's attendance system provided strong support for the school's epidemic prevention and control work. With DingTalk's check-in feature, the school could instantly track the health status and travel history of faculty and students, enabling immediate action in case of any abnormalities. This improved the efficiency and accuracy of epidemic prevention while boosting the sense of safety and trust among faculty and students.
After 2019, as DingTalk became a regular fixture across the entire campus, the school shifted its focus to exploring specialized versions of the platform and upgrading its digital capabilities. The college gradually migrated administrative documents, faculty course materials, and student assignments to the DingTalk platform and began experimenting with building a categorized knowledge base by consolidating content unique to the school. By integrating DingTalk's newly launched AI assistant feature, the college developed its own dedicated AI assistant to provide convenience for faculty and students in their learning and daily lives.
In addition, the IT department leveraged DingTalk's low-code platform to develop custom applications, continuously improving features such as visitor reception and equipment repair. They also created apps for grade inquiries, class schedule lookups, and library searches. In IT chat groups for universities, Chang Benchao frequently shares innovative applications developed by other institutions—for example, using DingTalk's built-in calendar to implement QR code-based attendance according to the class schedule—encouraging faculty to creatively combine DingTalk's existing features with their teaching needs to explore new possibilities.
"Unlike primary and secondary schools, the threshold for IT implementation in universities is relatively high because each institution has unique needs, and standardized systems often struggle to meet all requirements. DingTalk is an incredibly useful tool for universities undergoing digital transformation today. Its open APIs allow seamless integration with many locally deployed smart applications," said Chang Benchao. Looking ahead, he plans to continue collaborating with DingTalk to refine the "one-visit maximum" solution further, enhancing campus services, governance, teaching, and research efficiency.
The story of Yellow River Transportation College and DingTalk is not only a vivid case study in the wave of educational digitalization but also a heartfelt glimpse into the vast future of smart education. The road of digital transformation in higher education is long, yet countless similar digital stories are quietly unfolding—some hidden in the subtle details of daily teaching, others emerging in the grand narratives of educational management—waiting for us to discover, create, and write.
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