What if we, as faculties, don’t change ourselves?

The Seminar theme is resulted from the ideas of an acting team including Dr. Lam Thanh Hien (Vice Rector), Dr. Thanh-Lam Nguyen and 6 teachers participating in the study visits in Finland in 2019 within the EMVITET project (Empowering Vietnamese VET teachers for transformation towards Education 4.0). It is considered a BREAKTHROUGH topic to attract the active participation of about 100 teachers from six faculties: Information Technology, Mechatronics- Electronics, Pharmacy, Finance-Accounting, English Language, and Business Administration– International Business. The Seminar is the initial foundation for the development of educational ecosystem in Lac Hong University.

Opening the Seminar, Vice Rector Dr. Lam Thanh Hien stated that the context of Industrial Revolution 4.0 urges Lac Hong University to renovate themselves to provide high quality human resources to meet the demand of contemporary industries. One of the key factors is that all faculties must change themselves to adapt to the current digital education. Thus, EMVITET is one of the most important projects to help LHU to make the renovation happened by building the faculty competences for such digital era.

The Seminar aims to provide key insights of the current changes in education philosophy, education model, active approaches in teaching-learning activities, proactive learning environment and innovation activities learnt from HAMK and other partners of EMVITET. As a practical example of how to create student-centred learning environment, the organizing team conducted the Seminar in an unconventional way by incorporating different approaches in transferring the key messages, for examples: interactive tools during the presentation, debates, interaction between the speaker and audiences, quizzes, etc. Each presenter worked as a “new model” facilitator and each participant actively involved as an innovative learner; thus, they can observe how a “new model” facilitator looks like and learn how to change themselves to be ready for Education 4.0.

From the Kick-off seminar, more training workshops on digital pedagogy, application of digital tools into teaching-learning activities, student assessment, digital platform for e-learning and proactive study, etc. will be conducted at all faculties in LHU to successfully create the learning ecosystem in LHU. The ecosystem is based on student-centred learning, competence-based education, collaboration/ networking in digital environments, and sharing knowledge through communities of practice. It is also one of the ultimate objectives of EMVITET that is co-funded by ERASMUS+ Program of European Union and aims to build learning communities and ecosystem for Education 4.0 in Vietnam to create sustainable and meaningful education in Asian-European collaboration.