Vietnam OpenCourseWare’s First Day of School

By Hoang Le, VietNamNet Bridge

12/13/07

Vietnam OpenCourseWare (OCW) was officially made available yesterday, making web-based educational materials easily accessible to all Vietnamese students.

VietNamNet talked with Tran Viet Hung, Technical Director of Vietnam OpenCourseWare Project about Vietnam’s OCW development process and its importance to a contemporary education system.

OCW is considered a channel for Vietnamese students to access knowledge in a modern and convenient way. Could you please tell us more about it?

OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to put all their educational materials online, free and available to anyone.

The initiative has been applauded by universities and institutes across the globe and an OCW Consortium has been established which gathers 150 universities worldwide. The consortium meets two times a year, once in the US and again in a non-US country; several hundred participants attend each conference.

OCW has become a very popular word among students, scholars and researchers. It correlates with another popular education concept, Open Educational Resources (OER).

How did Vietnam OCW start?

Several Vietnamese lecturers attempted to apply MIT’s OCW in 2003 but were not successful. There were several reasons but mostly internet was not so popular at the time and the curriculum was not suitable to Vietnam.

The Vietnam OCW project started in June 2005, after then Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai visited the US. When Vietnamese officials visited MIT, they were fascinated by the MIT OCW presentation and realized the importance of bringing it to Vietnam.

After that, the Ministry of Education and Training, VASC Software and Media Company (VASC) and Vietnam Education Fund (VEF) joined hands to bring OCW to Vietnam.

The project was officially kicked off in November 2005 and it has received support from MIT OCW, Rice Connexions and the OCW Consortium. The goal is to help Vietnamese students access a full spectrum of educational resources and use them both effectively and free of charge.

Did you have any difficulties with implementation?

In the first phase, the trial basis, we saw a great deal of activity, but soon after the number decreased sharply.

We later found out there were several reasons behind the problem. There is a big difference between the background knowledge of Vietnamese and American students. Also, MIT’s curriculum and teaching methods are different. Moreover, Vietnamese students’ English was not good enough.

It was a very difficult period, we were at a standstill. But then, Pham Duc Trung Kien, Director of VEF, found the Rice University’s OCW program, called Rice Connexions, which was more along the lines of Vietnamese education. We signed a cooperation agreement with them in May 2006.

Finally, we decided to design Vietnam’s OCW in our own way: Vietnamese lecturers input content with the consultation of US professors. Vietnam OCW will be suitable for Vietnamese students because it is directly supported and participated in by Vietnamese lecturers as well as examined and revised by foreign professors.

What steps has the OCW project taken to get this far?

Period 1 (2006-2008): focus on developing educational materials for three fields, Electric-Electronics, Information Technology and Biology. The Ministry of Education and Training asked 14 key universities to participate in and use OCW.

Period 2: post 2008: The number of universities using OCW will be expanded. We will ask for donor support to further expand OCW.

What would you say to Vietnamese students about OCW?

OCW is a wonderful way to share knowledge. I hope it will be welcomed.