Abstract: The digital transformation of higher education is a complex systemic endeavor,characterized by both opportunities and challenges.At present,China's higher education digital transformation commonly faces practical situations described as “policy-driven,continuous equipment upgrades,fleeting innovations,and multiple conflicts in transformation,”which are manifested in the neglect of dynamic practice-oriented knowledge,the lack of distributed cognition,and the insufficiency of socially networked co-governance.The fundamental cause lies in the inability of traditional educational thought to align with the transformative logic of digitalization,which has become an ideological obstacle to higher education digital transformation.Strategies to overcome this impasse include:first,developing a new epistemology for the digital era,and reconstructing the knowledge system to integrate rational knowledge with dynamic practice-oriented knowledge;second,developing a new pedagogy for the digital era,and reconstructing a human–machine collaborative teaching paradigm to reintegrate teaching and learning;and third,developing a new governance perspective for the digital era,and reconstructing internal and external institutional mechanisms of universities.Only by updating both educational thought and educational infrastructure synchronously can the digital transformation of higher education achieve a qualitative leap from “formal resemblance” to “substantive realization.”

Key words: digital transformation of higher education, practical situations, educational thought