The Shanghai New Media Lab of Fudan University has partnered with several media groups to set up three new labs that will explore new educational models aimed at tackling technological challenges.

During the 2018 Global Deans’ Forum on Journalism and Communication held at the university’s campus on Oct 19, the Shanghai New Media Lab inked cooperation agreements with ThePaper, an online media start-up backed by the Shanghai United Media Group, Toutiao, a Beijing-based news and information content platform, and Iflytek, a Chinese information technology company.

The joint lab with ThePaper is expected to be a platform that will promote the use of big data in news collection and analysis, and act as a training tool for training professionals in the industry.

The lab with Toutiao will focus on news production, theoretical research and the study of evaluation systems of smart media. Undergraduates in journalism school at Fudan may also get to work with Toutiao employees and manage accounts on the Toutiao platform during their new media courses at school.

The lab with Iflytek will focus on key fields in new media, such as artificial intelligence and other innovative applications.

“We hope the collaboration with top news and technology companies in China will accelerate students’ learning on how groundbreaking development of new media technology is integrated into news reporting,” said Zhou Ye, deputy Party secretary of Fudan’s journalism school.

Fudan has been collaborating with news agencies from home and abroad to provide an added dimension to the curriculum since a decade ago. Some of its foreign partners include Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters and Dentsu Inc.

Zhou said that more joint projects with companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and NetEase are in the pipeline.

Apart from fostering greater exchange between the corporate and academic sectors, Fudan has also launched a cooperative program with the University of Missouri in Columbia in the US. This program allows journalism undergraduates to spend two years at each of the universities. Students of this program will stand a chance to embark on internships at renowned US public service broadcasters. Graduates will receive bachelor’s degrees from both universities.