Responding to COVID-19: VNU aims for 100% online training

This is the information given by the leaders of the Training Department - VNU at the 2021 Online Training Conference at VNU held this morning, June 3, 2021.

Permanent Deputy Director of VNU Nguyen Hoang Hai chaired the conference.

Also attending the online conference were leaders in charge of training of member and affiliated units of VNU, representatives of the Office and functional departments of VNU.

At the conference, Head of the Training Department of VNU Nguyen Dinh Duc said that by the end of May 2021, 94% of the courses of 11 training units of VNU were taught online, of which 7/11 training units taught 100% of the courses online.

Online training at VNU is being implemented in the following forms: e-learning, blended learning, teaching activities using electronic learning materials and organizing training on online training systems.

The leaders of the VNU Training Department assessed that member and affiliated training units have proactively deployed computer lab systems at the school, ready for distance learning activities. Most training units reported that registered students met the minimum number of credits for a semester according to the current university training regulations. Along with that, the legal document system on distance learning and basic continuing education has been basically completed, and the digital learning materials repository has been enhanced.

Head of Training Department Nguyen Dinh Duc also requested that units need to strengthen training for management staff on distance learning, online training and IT application in training; training on online training management activities in an environment with technology application; Ensure teaching and learning activities are not interrupted due to prolonged epidemics; Timely reflect on difficulties and shortcomings to support and remove them during the implementation process.

Director of the Institute for Education Quality Assurance Nghiem Xuan Huy said that recently, VNU has built an Online Learning System (LMS) with the goal of integrating teaching and learning data with the unified data warehouse of VNU to organize online teaching and learning activities according to the blended education approach at units in VNU, contributing to improving the quality and innovation of teaching activities.

LMS software is integrated with the training management system of VNU and other units to ensure that information about training programs, courses, classes, lecturers, and students is synchronized and unified. At the same time, it connects with the Information Center - Library to use and supplement digital learning resources provided by VNU.

At the conference, leaders of member and affiliated training units of VNU pointed out a number of problems when implementing online training such as: lack of methods to test and evaluate students during the learning process; specific subjects still require direct learning; learning quality is affected due to limited direct interaction...

According to Vice President Pham Bao Son, there are 4 groups of issues related to digital transformation at VNU: Training management software, learning material management software, online learning system LMS and video conferencing software system (Google Meeting, Microsoft Teams, Zoom Meeting...). Vice President of VNU Pham Bao Son suggested that units need to unify the use of training management software to synchronize and unify throughout VNU to improve efficiency and control the quality of online teaching.

Concluding the conference, Permanent Deputy Director of VNU Nguyen Hoang Hai said that it is necessary to develop regulations for 100% online training in the current epidemic situation, instead of the current regulation that a maximum of 30% of the program can be trained online.

Regarding the issue of testing and evaluating the quality of students' learning, the Permanent Vice President of VNU requested that there should be a mechanism to monitor the training and examination process to ensure the quality of training and student output. Units can propose different forms of testing and evaluation, but need to report specifically to VNU for supervision and quality assurance.

Regarding the form of defending graduation theses, dissertations, and dissertations online, Deputy Director Nguyen Hoang Hai directed that units allow undergraduates and graduate students to defend their graduation theses and master's theses online; foreign doctoral students are allowed to defend their doctoral theses completely online, Vietnamese doctoral students are allowed to defend their doctoral theses partially online at the grassroots level, and VNU-Hanoi thesis defenses in person. In addition, for cases where doctoral students are unable to defend their theses in person due to the impact of the epidemic, they can also defend their theses online.