Exploration of Cultural Education Path of Visual Communication Design Software Courses in Applied Universities Based on Intangible Cultural Heritage

Intangible cultural heritage, as an important carrier of excellent traditional Chinese culture, carries profound historical memories and cultural genes. With the continuous advancement of the "new liberal arts" construction and the "Digital China" strategy, application-oriented universities face dual challenges of cultural inheritance and technological application in talent cultivation. This paper takes three core software courses in the Visual Communication Design major at Liaoning University of Communication as the research object, focusing on "Animate software dynamic design application", "Illustrator software commercial design application", and "Cinema 4D software exhibition design application" to conduct an 18-week teaching practice, exploring a three-stage educational path of "cultural cognition - skill translation - value practice". The research adopts the action research method, combining various methods such as questionnaire surveys, classroom observations, work assessments, and interviews, to systematically analyze how intangible cultural heritage elements can be effectively integrated into the entire process of software teaching, enhancing students' cultural understanding, design transformation ability, and social responsibility. Practice has shown that the deep integration of intangible cultural heritage and software courses not only enhances students' cultural identity and innovation ability, but also provides a feasible paradigm for application-oriented universities to achieve the educational goal of "cultivating people through culture and educating people through technology".