Operating a Virtual Teaching and Research Section as an Open-Source Community: Practice and Experience

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 crucial for the exploration of the digital transformation of new basic teaching organization construction in the information age. However, this new type of organization transcends institutional and spatial boundaries, and motivating participants and sustaining their engagement are key challenges in VTRS implementation. 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 course preparation, have been implemented, and the domestic database in the classroom brand activity has been established. The VTRS-DB has incubated several national and provincial level first-class courses and has won national and provincial level teaching achievement awards, achieving significant results.