The teaching and research section is the fundamental organizational unit for teaching and research in a university, and the virtual teaching and research section (VTRS) is a crucial exploration for the digital transformation of new basic teaching organization construction in the information age. However, this new type of organization transcends university and spatial boundaries, and motivating participants and sustaining their engagement is a key challenge in VTRS operation. The VTRS for database courses (VTRS-DB) proposes an open community-based operating model, founded on the core concepts of "openness, dedication, competition, and orderliness." It establishes a hierarchical organizational structure and working group operation mechanism. After two years of practical exploration, a course knowledge graph and a wealth of teaching experiment cases have been developed. A series of distinctive teaching and research methods, such as "Collaborative Preparation of a Course," have been implemented, and the "Domestic Database in the Classroom" brand activity has been established. VTRS-DB has incubated several national/provincial-level first-class courses and has won national/provincial-level teaching achievement awards, achieving significant results.

The work entitled “Operating a Virtual Teaching and Research Section as an Open Source Community: Practice and Experience” was published on Frontiers of Digital Education (published on Dec. 19, 2024).
DOI: 10.1007/s44366-024-0037-4