Digital Transformation of Higher Education in China: Ways to Improve Academic Performance

The globalization of the economy creates the need for tech -savvy specialists, thereby stimulating the digital transformation of the education industry. This study aims to determine whether the integration of virtual reality and flipped classroom is able to increase academic performance of individuals enrolled in the course "Strategic management for the sustainable development of national and international tourism". The study took place in the 2021/22 academic year in the department of tourism management at Zhejiang University, China. The study population consisted of 407 third -year students (54 % male and 46 % female); the mean age of the respondents was 20.81 +/- 0.94. Students in the Virtual Reality (VR) group showed 7.84 % better performance that those in the Flipped Classroom (FC) group. The percentage of difference between the VR and traditional groups was 13.01 %. Students in the FC group showed 4.79 % better performance than students in the traditional group (p > 0.05). According to the respondents, the major benefits of innovative learning over traditional education methods are the support of personalized learning, flexibility, visual and auditory memory development, complete immersion into the learning process, and accessibility of learning materials. On the other hand, users reported getting addicted to the virtual world, spending a lot of money on the necessary software and hardware, experiencing reduction in interpersonal communication, and having problems with content creation. The present findings can be useful to teachers who seek to integrate innovative technologies into the learning process. Future research will focus on investigating the impact of other innovative technologies by integrating them into an online course "Analysis of the economic activity of tourist enterprises".