Pathways to High-Quality Development of Smart Sports on Campus in China: An Analysis of 60 Model Smart Schools and Benchmark Schools for Basic Education Modernization

The high-quality development of smart sports on campus is a crucial component of implementing the national education digitalization strategy and a key engine for advancing the high-quality development of school sports. Through field research and grounded theory, we conducted an investigation into the advancement of Smart Sports on Campus, using 60 model smart campuses and benchmark schools for basic education modernization as cases. We identified key challenges and formulated strategic pathways for future development. The findings reveal that high-quality development of Smart Sports on Campus follows an action logic characterized by government leadership, support from diverse digital-intelligent technologies, reliance on smart education platforms, assistance from higher education resources, and precision services from enterprises. However, challenges persist, including a lack of collaborative linkage between schools and families, low digital literacy among physical education teachers, a lack of targeted incentive mechanisms at the school level, suboptimal application effectiveness of intelligent sports equipment, and ambiguous standards for Smart Sports on Campus. To address these issues, we propose reinforcing policy and institutional support to establish actionable data governance models; enhancing PE teachers’ digital literacy and fostering a human-machine collaborative teaching philosophy; strengthening tripartite smart collaboration among families, schools, and communities to co-design smart sports on campus initiatives; upgrading smart infrastructure for campus sports with personalized service capabilities; and establishing a school-enterprise integration mechanism for precise collaboration to deepen the integration of intelligent sports equipment and class teaching.