Abstract
VOCW’s mission is to make the OpenCourseWare features rich, useable, re-useable, and accessible at no cost firstly for academic environment, and later on to all in the society.
The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), the VASC Software and Media Company (VASC), and the Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) have cooperated to build up the Vietnam OpenCourseWare (VOCW) project with the purpose of overcoming all the obstacles in direct using the OpenCourseWare for Vietnamese users.
Three data centers have been set up in Hanoi, Danang, and Ho Chi Minh City with robust servers and high speed Internet connection. In addition, 14 servers have been installed at 14 university members of the project to make it easier for the faculty members and students to access to the Vietnam OpenCourseWare as well as to save Internet access cost for the universities.
VOCW also receives a strong support from Rice University in using the Connexions software tools which are considered a revolution in publishing. In making an interesting comparison between learning materials/knowledge and the Lego game: In Lego, however complicated the final products might be, they are built from the same bases that are the small plastic squares which can be magically put together to form different shapes. Likely, if there is a source of information that is stored in the form of smaller completed topics, people can manipulate those topics in different ways to build up a bigger topic which can help solve some particular problems. With the above conception, the Connexions software tools store information in forms of modules and courses. Module is a complete topic or a complete part of a big topic, just like a plastic square in the Lego game. “Course” is a combination of various modules arranged in a particular order, just like the final product after putting the plastic squares together in the Lego game.
Connexions software tools enable everybody to contribute their knowledge even only in the form of a 2-3 page single module written about certain topic. The fact is that it takes time to compose a textbook, or even a chapter of a textbook, but everyone can compose a 2-3 page module on a subject that they are interested in. Therefore, if one of the millions of faculty members across the country composes just one module, a huge content repository with all subject areas will be built up. When there is a need to make a textbook, the faculty members just need to make a frame and then add in the modules that already exist. Composing a textbook may take a couple of years but with Connexions it takes just few days.
To protect the rights of content contributors (authors), the Connexions software tools provide the authors with the Creative Commons license. The VOCW team is working with the Creative Commons organization to port the licenses into Vietnamese to make it easier for Vietnamese users.
To get the participation of the whole community in building and sharing knowledge, the VOCW team has carried out many training courses on how to use Connexions software tools to create modules and courses on the VOCW website for faculty members and students at member universities across the country.
After two years of operation, on December 12, 2007, the VOCW website at http://www.vocw.edu.vn was officially launched
We hope that with the great support and participation of the whole community, Vietnam will soon have an online reference material center which is free and indispensable to faculty members, students, and researchers in Vietnam.
Media
Speaker
Do Ngoc Minh
Deputy Director
Center for E-Learning and Online Testing Technology, Information Technology Institute
Vietnam National University
Prior to his appointment at VEF as OER&IT Expert in October 2007, Mr. Minh Do worked at the Information Technology Institute (ITI), Vietnam National University (VNU) as Deputy Director of Center for e-Learning and Online Testing Technology. During his career at ITI, Mr. Minh Do had 4 years experience working as a coordinator for the "In-country training course," the second phase of the "Vietnam Information Technology Training Project" hosted by JICA Japan and Vietnam National University - Hanoi (VNU - Hanoi). He also had 2 years as invited IT lecturer on television (in cooperation with the Education Channel of the Vietnam Television, VTV2). At present, he works for VTV2 as an IT consultant to build up the content for the program Education magazine (Tap chi Giao duc).
In 2006, Mr. Minh Do completed a one-month training course at School of Educational Studies, Latrobe University, Australia a Professional development program in higher education governance. In 2007, he had an invitation from Korea Agency for Digital Opportunities & Promotion to participate in the training course on National Informatization Framework.
With his experience in both the IT system and e-Learning activities management, Mr. Minh Do is making efforts for the development and success of VEF, in general, and of the Vietnam OpenCourseWare Project (VOCW), in particular.
