TITLE:
Research on Role Imbalance, Symbiosis Dilemma and Empowerment Reconstruction Strategies of University Counselors in the Scenario of Digital and Intelligent Education
AUTHORS:
Shali Li, Liu Yang
KEYWORDS:
Digital and Intelligent Education, University Counselors, Symbiosis Theory, Role Imbalance, Role Reconstruction, Empowerment Paths
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Applied Sciences,
Vol.16 No.6,
June
25,
2026
ABSTRACT: The digital and intelligent transformation has profoundly reshaped the structural and operational logic of ideological and political education in Chinese universities. The new educational paradigm characterized by human-machine collaboration, virtual-real integration, and precise empowerment has deconstructed the closed ecosystem and one-way transmission pattern of traditional ideological and political education, leaving university counselors trapped in a structural dilemma of role ambiguity, functional alienation, and declining discursive authority. From the perspective of symbiosis theory (symbiotic units, symbiotic modes, and symbiotic environments), the four core actors—technology, counselors, students, and institutional environment—within the digital-intelligent education system present multiple contradictions such as asymmetric symbiosis, partial-benefit symbiosis, discrete symbiosis, and insufficient environmental support, which directly lead to the adaptive failure of counselors’ traditional roles and the lagging construction of new roles. Based on the three-dimensional model of symbiosis theory, this paper systematically explains the internal mechanism and practical imbalance of counselors’ role evolution in the digital-intelligent scenario. Facing the new normal of digital education, it reconstructs four core new roles for counselors: the value leader of digital ideological and political education, the precise supplier of intelligent education services, the cyber-ecosystem governor, and the hub of teacher-student symbiotic relations. Furthermore, it constructs a trinity collaborative empowerment system of technological empowerment, institutional empowerment, and ecological empowerment, aiming to resolve symbiotic conflicts in the digital education field, promote the professional and digital-intelligent transformation of the counselor team, and serve the high-quality development of university IPE and the implementation of the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education in the new era.