Big Data Dream
Graduates who can meet the recruitment needs of companies and corporations is a problem for higher education institutions.
Remember in 2008, after a year of surveying nearly 2,000 final year students at 5 major engineering universities in Vietnam, Intel Company only selected 40 candidates.
A representative of the US chip manufacturer at that time shared that this was a very low recruitment rate.
15 years later, the Military Industry-Telecoms Group also surveyed 2,000 excellent graduates from major engineering and technology schools in Vietnam. This time, the number Viettel recruited was only 90 people.
At the 2023 education conference on institutions and policies to improve the quality of higher education, Colonel Duong Xuan Phuong, Deputy Director of Viettel Academy, expressed his belief that the training quality is relatively good. However, he also mentioned the fact that businesses always spend time on additional training because students still lack some important skills for work.
Also at that conference, among the many challenges of higher education in Vietnam, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Hoang Minh Son said: "The mechanism for assessing and monitoring quality may not be truly effective and substantive."
This big problem has long been recognized by universities and they are making efforts to change this situation, starting with improving the currently unsystematic information management system.
Sharing his vision for information management, Mr. Ho Sy Loi, Deputy Chief of Office of Hanoi National University, emphasized: "We need to connect and understand students from before they are students, when they are students, until they are no longer studying at school."
According to Mr. Loi, the system must manage and process details to the point where it can identify the motivation, interest and level of participation of students in each class.
Associate Professor Dr. Vu Hai Quan, Director of Ho Chi Minh City National University, has repeatedly emphasized the need to collect and analyze big data of learners to find out factors affecting learning outcomes. From there, universities can make adjustments to policies, teaching methods, and assessments to improve training quality.
However, for many years, this vision has been a luxury even for large universities. The main reasons are lack of investment, fragmented information technology systems of schools, departments and centers, and data that is not interconnected. Information about students, lecturers or even the school's infrastructure resources are scattered across many training units.
Based on the above reality, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City and Danang University are joining hands with the Project for Higher Education Innovation (PHER) to build a new architecture for the management information system (MIS).
Over the past several months, with the support of the project, schools have collaborated with experts from Indiana University (USA) to learn about management experience; together with domestic experts, they have designed the system. It is expected that in November 2024, a new design, along with new management and data creation policies, will be put into pilot.
PHER project representatives asserted that a good information management system will develop a decision support environment for all levels of management. Data is also a key input into the "personalized learning" process for students.
Develop a training program monitoring system
Along with building an information management system, data collection and analysis is one of the issues that need to be improved when monitoring training quality and internal quality assurance (IQA).
The PHER project has supported 10 member schools of 3 universities to develop more consistent training program monitoring systems, an essential element of internal quality assurance.
This is intended to help universities move from a culture of compliance with external standards to a culture of continuous quality improvement.
Professor Victor Borden, Indiana University (USA) realized that Vietnamese universities really care about how learners benefit from training programs.
PHER and universities are jointly developing a set of online course evaluation standards. It is expected that by the end of 2024, Hanoi National University will issue a set of online course quality evaluation standards with 7 standards, 30 criteria and 93 indicators.
Fair, accurate, transparent assessment
In order for the assessment and monitoring of training quality to be effective, the participation of university staff and lecturers is essential. However, according to the Department of Quality Management, Ministry of Education and Training, teachers themselves also have "limited confidence" in the results of quality assessment, especially in their own assessment.
For many years, the criteria for evaluating staff and lecturers have often been limited to qualitative and highly general criteria. Even when quantitative indicators are given, they are often purely a matter of counting teaching hours and scientific articles.
Dr. Tran Manh Cuong, Head of the Department of Organization and Personnel - Administration, University of Science, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, said that this evaluation is not only about rewards - punishments, salary payment, but also about building a healthy working environment to attract good scientists.
"For scientists, money is only one part, their evaluation must be fair and accurate. It is more important than whether they receive 10 million or 20 million VND at the end of the month," Dr. Tran Manh Cuong expressed.
To solve this problem, experts from the PHER project are supporting schools in building a staff evaluation system based on KPI (key performance indicator).
In addition to some qualitative factors, these “KPIs” must be quantifiable, must cover job characteristics, and must also take into account learner input.
A manager at a major university said that after the KPI pilot, some teachers proactively asked to resign. Those resignations may be the result of "fair and accurate" evaluations that state agencies have long complained are difficult to achieve.
Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Phuong, Deputy Director of the PHER project, expressed her confidence in the new approach, using KPIs with specific, quantitative assessment criteria, based on data and evidence, which will help evaluate all types of cadres fairly, accurately and transparently.
Vietnam’s higher education has come a long way and achieved certain successes. By the end of 2010, almost all of Intel’s technical staff in Vietnam were foreigners. However, at Intel Product Vietnam, there are now 2,700 staff in Vietnam, of which 84% are engineers.
Within just over a decade, 95% of the workforce was Vietnamese, including senior management positions.
Sixteen years after complaining about the world’s lowest hiring rate, the company’s leaders have publicly expressed confidence in Vietnam’s goal of training semiconductor engineers by 2030. The target has now reached 50,000 people.
But there is still a long way to go; behind the assertion are a series of problems that schools are trying to solve.
In addition to the three issues that need to change above, the PHER Project also advises universities on a series of activities to support the professional development of lecturers - strengthen international accreditation of training programs; as well as activities to promote research at universities according to international standards.
Prof. Dr. Tran Ngoc Anh, Head of the PHER project, expressed: "From the efforts and determination to innovate of the universities that the PHER project is cooperating with, we still have complete confidence in a future where Vietnamese higher education is on par with prestigious training systems in the world."
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/giao-duc/tap-doan-lon-chi-tuyen-duoc-vai-chuc-sinh-vien-giai-phap-nao-cho-dao-tao-20240920085139363.htm
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