Young people with good expertise still fail to succeed in international market, why?
Dr. Le Hoang Quynh, one of 10 faces honored with the Golden Globe Science and Technology Award 2021, shared that many young people who have very good professional skills and progressive working attitude, but failed to succeed in international labour market.
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| Dr. Le Hoang Quynh, Lecturer at Institute of Technology, Hanoi National University, in the field of Information Technology, Digital Transformation and Automation, and her associates. (Photo: WVR) |
Digital transformation must "start with ourselves"
With regards to digital transformation in education to equip Vietnamese citizens with knowledge and skills to work in an international environment, Dr. Quynh stressed that digital transformation in Vietnam must "start with ourselves".
According to her, digital transformation is not a new story as it has been mentioned increasingly in all fields during the past years. However, this is not a door that once passed through, one can be considered as a successful person. In fact this is a long innovative process which needs to make “flesh and bone” changes for the education sector, with new directions, new methods, new techniques and new foundations.
Dr. Quynh pointed out some reasons why digital transformation in Vietnam needs to “start with ourselves". While the basic facilities can be built by taking advantage of and learning from other countries or other industries, the human factor in the Vietnamese education sector has specific characteristics, very different from other countries in ASEAN region and in the world.
Therefore, in order to ensure that the digital transformation process can take place effectively, appropriately and quickly, it requires the shared contributions of all 5 human actors of the education sector (the State, schools, teachers, learners and families). Everyone has to work hard to bring about changes. In each step of the digital transformation, each entity has its own share of responsibility.
Specifically, the State provides orientations, building a technology foundation. The schools are responsible for implementation. The teachers and learners play the central role of the revolution, and families are the solid rear.
The human factor was the one that used to make digital transformation impossible in education in the past. However, the COVID-19 pandemic made things really changed. Under the circumstances of social distancing and lockdowns, digital transformation in education suddenly become a solution that we cannot help but take.
Digital transformation - the key to create a flexible educational environment
In the current context, to improve competitiveness of Vietnamese high-quality human resources in Vietnamese and international labour markets, Dr. Quynh has made certain suggestions.
According to her, many young people with good professional abilities and working attitude, but failed to succeed into international market. The key to this failure is mostly due to the inability to properly display their own abilities. However, the deeper causes often stem from the shortcomings in communication in foreign languages, or lack of soft skills to show their full potential to the recruitment specialist.
Therefore, besides professional knowledge, Vietnamese high-quality human resources need to improve their comand of foreign languages and soft skills. In addition, in the context of increasingly developing digital transformation today, foreign languages play a particularly important role not only in communication but also in accessing electronic knowledge stores.
Research communities are tending to be more "open", willing to share their progress and resources with the community. To be able to access and utilize this knowledge effectively, we cannot depend on automatic translation programs but must really understand and master specialized foreign languages.
Digital transformation is an important key in creating a flexible educational environment, increasing interactivity and practical experience, helping learners develop these skills quickly, frequently and effectively.
The managers and teachers need to take lead at the change
Regarding solutions for Vietnam to become advanced in digital transformation in education, Dr. Quynh suggested that the important thing is to take quick but precise steps to carry out the digital transformation with three following conditions:
First, to ensure technology infrastructure and equipment for management units, learners and teachers. However, technology infrastructure and equipment are not enough in applying information technology to education.
The key difference in making digital transformation is that these technology infrastructures and equipment must be synchronized and connected on the same digital platform to ensure interaction among individuals, sharing in the community and smooth functioning of organizations.
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| Digital transformation allows education to be carried out comprehensively and completely without face-to-face meetings between teachers and learners, reducing lecturing, flexing and personalizing learning. (Photo: Dan tri) |
Second, digital transformation requires changes from managers as well as teachers in their thinking, capacity and knowledge, skills of information technology of education sector.
Third, we need to pay attention to developing a digital education culture, ensuring learners have an active and self-disciplined learning attitude, and families and society have maintained necessary understanding and support.
Digital transformation in education have to focus simultaneously on two key factors, that are the digital platform and the people. To ensure the role of the digital platform as an effective teaching and learning tool, the technology infrastructure needs to be fully and synchronously built and supplemented.
One aspect which needs to be viewed more positively is the trust and autonomy given to teachers. Teachers, as direct implementers of teaching actitivities and doing scientific researches, have to play a key role in curriculum development and digital transformation.
People need to change their thinking
The key point in educational innovation with digital transformation is that the human knowledge can be gradually accumulated; however, the way of thinking is needed to change. Leaders and teachers need to be more flexible, more “open” up to new things in order to be ready for changes and adjustments.
Digital transformation allows education to be carried out comprehensively and completely without face-to-face meetings between teachers and learners, reducing lecturing, flexing and personalizing learning. This requires teachers to master new technology, have new thinking way and be more creative in building teaching methods to both ensure the volume of knowledge, and create excitement and inspiration to learners.
For learners, digital transformation is both an opportunity and a challenge, requiring the ability to self-study and learn anytime, anywhere. Therefore, learners need to be proactive in their mindset, maintain spirit and soft skills.
Digital transformation in education needs to go with its own roadmap
To improve the quality of education as well as young human resources, Dr. Quynh said that digital transformation in essenses does not change the core value of the education sector as the quality of education as well as young human resources does not completely depend on digital transformation.
However, using the advantages and opportunities bringing by digital transformation can greatly improve the quality of education towards international standards.
Firstly, one of the factors that should be exploited to the fullest extent of online learning is the ability to personalize for learners. Educational orientation, educational programs should be built in a way to ensure uniformity as well as to promote maximum creativity of learners. Education is designed not only for fostering knowledge, but also raising passion for the young generation.
Secondly, it is necessary to create conditions for learners to access advanced knowledge in the world by supplementing foreign e-learning materials. This not only helps learners gaining more knowledge, but also promoting language development and adaptability, creating an important foundation to integrating the world.
Third, digital transformation is the key to make learning and practicing to go hand in hand, connecting with reality and providing visual proofs.
Dr. Quynh made certain policy proposals for making Vietnam become one of the leading countries in digital transformation in education.
She affirmed that currently, leaders at all levels have been paying great attention to promoting digital transformation in education, considering this as one of the eight priority areas for implementation in the National Digital Transformation program.
Digital transformation in education in Vietnam needs a specific roadmap, suitable to specific economic, social, political and human conditions of Vietnam. Although this renewal process is inevitable and has taken place at a very fast speed, any possible unstable step can have a negative impact on the psychology of society, as well as on the process of long-term development.
Therefore, it requires high determination, careful preparation and worthy investment. As a person working in the education sector, Dr. Quynh expressed her hope that the State will have detailed surveys from the teachers and learners to come up with the most appropriate policies, and at the same time to have enough flexibility so that each individual can make appropriate adjustments according to the general guidances.
| Dr. Le Hoang Quynh, Lecturer at Institute of Technology, Hanoi National University, in the field of Information Technology, Digital Transformation and Automation - Being one of 10 faces honored with the Golden Globe Science and Technology Award 2021. - Having 2 national patents, 4 international published articles on the list of Q1, 23 articles published in international scientific conferences. - Won international awards organized by prestigious research communities: Rank 3 at the Women in Data Science (WiDS) Datathon 2021 contest; Rank 2 of the MEDIQA 2021 - Multi-Answer Summarization contest (part of the BioNLP workshop series, the leading workshop series in the field of natural language processing); Rank 4 challenges in extracting disease-causing chemical relationships in biomedical texts (BioCreative V, 2015)... |
(Translates by Thai Nguyen)
