Proposal to expand the use of the course website.

On June 21, 2012, the University of Social Sciences and Humanities held a contract acceptance meeting for the use of the course website with lecturers, chaired by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Thi Minh Hoa - Vice Rector of the University.With the aim of piloting the use of course websites as a tool to innovate teaching methods and enhance faculty-student interaction, in the second semester of the 2011-2012 academic year, the University signed contracts with 15 lecturers from various departments within the University to use the course website. This pilot program yielded positive results while also highlighting some technical difficulties and limitations, as well as potential sanctions if the use of course websites were to be expanded and standardized in the future. One of the young staff members whose contract was approved with outstanding results, Ms. Nguyen Khanh Thuong (lecturer in the Faculty of Journalism and Communication), stated that the course website is an excellent tool for lecturers, helping them to truly change their perceptions and teaching methods, and enabling students to learn in a more proactive way. Using a course website enhances interaction between lecturers, students, and information sources, proving highly effective in improving teaching quality and academic management. Lecturers can build a rich database of lecture notes, learning materials, and multimedia resources related to their subjects to share with students. Dr. Pham Manh Ha (lecturer in the Psychology Department) shared that, from a psychological perspective, the course website helps overcome the shyness characteristic of Vietnamese students, encouraging them to confidently discuss their concerns with other lecturers. Among the website's features, Dr. Ha considers the forum to be the most impressive, a place where both lecturers and students can actively and enthusiastically exchange information on specialized topics. This helps bridge the gap between lecturers and students, allowing lecturers to understand students' thoughts and interests and make appropriate adjustments. In the future, the university is fully capable of implementing online teaching for students through the course website. Ms. Nguyen Thu Thuy (Faculty of Tourism Studies) acknowledged that using the course website requires lecturers to have a higher sense of responsibility as their lectures are publicly and officially published online, and lecturers invest more effort in the course. However, the results obtained from both lecturers and students are much better than using only traditional classroom teaching methods as currently. Nevertheless, many lecturers also believe there are still quite a few limitations in this pilot implementation, such as: this is a very new approach for both students and lecturers, so everything is very unfamiliar and awkward in the beginning; lecturers lack experience and methods to encourage and engage students to use the course website regularly; users have not fully exploited the features of the course website; the website interface is not user-friendly; The school's computer and network systems are not yet sufficient to support the frequent use of course websites by students... At the meeting, all speakers affirmed the prospect of using course websites as an effective tool in improving teaching quality and innovating classroom management, and suggested that the school expand this approach throughout the school. However, achieving this requires a roadmap and commensurate investment to upgrade the network and computer labs; upgrade application software; prepare both the mindset and skills for use by teachers and students; and issue relevant official regulations... Mr. Dinh Viet Hai, Deputy Head of the Training Department, said: "A legal framework is needed for this. This regulation needs to be built on the basis of ensuring: paving the way for innovation in testing and evaluation to improve learning quality; preventing negative practices and cheating in exams; and synchronizing the division of responsibilities within the school to maximize resource utilization."