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Scenarios for Change

Module by: Phuong Nguyen

In the following section, scenarios for change are described that integrate recommendations from the five topic areas and the discipline specific observations. But first, the management of change is discussed in order to guide the development and implementation of the scenarios and subsequent potential pilot projects intended to produce models for the development of higher education in Vietnam that might be adopted across academic fields and institutions.

Management of Change in Higher Education Reform

The basic premise of the Government Resolution No. 14/2005/NQ-CP dated November 2, 2005, on the Fundamental and Comprehensive Reform of Higher Education in Vietnam 2006-2020, is that improvement in both the process and results of Vietnamese higher education is desired and, in fact, necessary. This mandate is consistent with the charge to the U.S. expert teams, invited by VEF through the National Academies, namely to evaluate the status of undergraduate education in specific fields and provide observations and recommendations with the intent to help improve Vietnamese higher education. However, it is a tremendous challenge to consider changing all components of a country’s higher education system including organizational structure, policies, teaching and learning methods, and administrative and fiscal procedures. Such extensive modifications require careful, thoughtful, and systematic planning and management of the change process.
The following eight general conditions represent a synthesis of various studies of organizational change (Ely, 1990). These conditions are critical to creating sound plans and ensuring that changes are eventually institutionalized. They are used as an organizing structure for the recommendations included in this report. The topic is followed by a quote, which might be used by individuals involved in change and which is intended to embody the essence of the idea. All of these conditions exist with regard to the intent and outcome of this report.
  1. Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo: “Things can be better.”
Some level of dissatisfaction appears to exist throughout the Vietnamese higher education community, including MOET, university administrators, teaching faculty, and students. Government Resolution 14 on the Fundamental and Comprehensive Reform of Higher Education in Vietnam 2006-2020 reflects this condition as well.
  1. Knowledge and Skills Exist: “Implementers are up to the task.”
The basic level of knowledge and skills exists in Vietnam, but is low, in comparison to U.S. models of higher education, including methods of teaching and learning, academic program structure, institutional financing, and assessment and accreditation. Addressing this condition may require considerable faculty, administrative, and organizational development. Training workshops, on-site support by experts in the field, case studies and practical examples, and new models of higher education may all be required.
  1. Resources are Available: “Inadequate or insufficient resources can torpedo a change.”
The scope and nature of the changes required for the transformation of Vietnamese higher education imply the addition of extensive and varied amounts of resources. Important resources to consider are the following: qualified faculty, sufficient numbers of instructors, up-to-date laboratory equipment, current learning materials, quality learning facilities, and funds to pay for these resources.
  1. Time is Available: “Individual time and organizational timelines exist.”
Time is a special resource that is relevant to many components in the change process and includes the following: (a) for faculty—time on a day-to-day basis (e.g., time to provide substantive feedback) and professional development time on a long-term basis (e.g., time to develop new knowledge and skills); (b) for institutions and departments—organizational and instructional development time (e.g., time to change structures and approaches); and (c) for country-wide decision-makers—capacity building time (e.g., time to enhance MOET resources for the assessment and accreditation process, time to provide professional and instructional development support services, and time to enhance project and change management capabilities).
  1. Rewards and Incentives Exist for Participants: “What’s in it for me?”
All participants, including administrators, teaching faculty, support personnel, and students want to know the external benefits to change, including incentives for being involved in the change process and rewards for successful change implementation. Comprehensive and consistent attention to these external inducements to change is an essential part of the planned change process.
  1. Participation is Expected and Encouraged: “Why should I change?”
Important inducements to change are the expectations set by those with formal administrative authority and by informal opinion leaders. Such encouragement will facilitate the involvement by more than a select few, who are invited to participate, or who volunteer to participate, in the change process. Thus, encouraging a broad range of people to embrace change will help to move the innovation from the early adopters to the willing majority of those in any community.
  1. Commitment: “Long-term institutionalization of change is essential.”
Advocacy by Government officials or Rectors alone will not suffice to establish a major change, such as the reform of higher education in Vietnam. Deans, chairs, teaching faculty, and students must all make a commitment to comprehensive change. How to demonstrate commitment will vary by situation and role, but consistent messages and actions suggesting commitment will be required of all.
  1. Leadership: “It is essential to identify and develop formal and informal leaders.”
In the relatively early stages of the change process, top-level formal leadership from all sectors is required to set expectations, incentives, and rewards for participating in change. As changes are spread, many other leaders, including informal leaders among groups such as new instructors and students, should play leadership roles.
The issues identified through the visits of the U.S. expert teams include information related to these conditions. The recommendations include strategies and interventions that will address these conditions and thus facilitate the overall management of change regarding the improvement of higher education in Vietnam. The following are scenarios and potential pilot projects that integrate the information produced by the visiting teams.

Scenarios and Potential Pilot Projects

The following scenarios sketch out the context of potential pilot projects for future efforts at various levels, which include MOET and the Vietnam National Universities at the national level, regional universities, universities at the local level, and departmental programs at the institutional level. The scenarios provide general descriptions of actions that might be taken at each level. The opportunities for improvement described in the previous sections provide detailed suggestions that can be used to implement the scenarios.

National Level

As noted above, Government Resolution 14 on the Fundamental and Comprehensive Reform of Higher Education Vietnam 2006-2020 mandates improvement in both the process and results of Vietnamese higher education. MOET is the primary agency responsible for ensuring such improvements. Therefore, a scenario for change that could be led by MOET might include the following activities:
  1. A national effort to enable access to the latest scholarly information for all universities via high speed Internet connections to electronic journals and data bases. By contracting with major service providers and suppliers of such journals and data bases, MOET could create a nation-wide network of scholarly information related to both specific disciplines and pedagogy. This, in turn, would potentially provide the foundation for efforts to build instructor capacity in subject matter knowledge, teaching methods, interaction with students, and research.
  2. Leadership efforts to continue to foster local autonomy and flexibility so that programs can keep curricula up-to-date. One step that MOET might take is to revise and reorganize the state mandated curriculum, allowing for curricular decisions at the institutional level.
  3. Institutional evaluation that emphasizes continuous improvement. MOET might consider holding institutions accountable for taking advantage of MOET’s efforts to foster local autonomy and flexibility.
  4. A program review process that incorporates feedback from national and international scholars with expertise in both disciplinary content and pedagogy. The development and implementation of local program review processes also could be considered a “criterion” of institutional accreditation.
  5. Ways to evaluate the quality of universities across Vietnam on their continuous improvement of student learning and research productivity. MOET might consider establishing mechanisms to assist those institutions judged to be of lower quality to rise to the highest possible levels.
  6. Ways to ensure change by requiring systematic professional development efforts at all levels of Vietnam’s higher education system, including MOET.

Vietnam National University

VNU provides a potential organizational structure for facilitating systematic professional and organizational development efforts. Among the universities that constitute the VNU, there are experts in disciplinary specialties and pedagogy as well as numerous administrators and instructors with experience and advanced degrees from internationally recognized institutions. In addition, there are units specifically dedicated to assessment and improvement. A scenario for change led by VNU might include the following activities:
  1. Experts at VNU could provide leadership in the establishment of Centers for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in each university.
  2. VNU and local Centers for Excellence in Teaching and Learning might help to organize professional development workshop series that build capacity among the teaching staff and academic administrators with the goal of improving curricula, course content, and instructional methods.
  3. Long-term development efforts might be guided by national and international consultants, who potentially build relationships with university teams. It is essential that individual workshops and long-term development activities be guided by specific goals and measurable objectives related to immediate capacity building, instructional improvement, and the improvement of student learning.

University Level

At each university, the academic administrators have the responsibility to take advantage of the autonomy and flexibility offered by MOET. A scenario for change led by individual universities includes the following activities to be considered:
  1. Revising curricula, consolidating courses, and reducing the number of courses in order to conform with top level universities, typically requiring a credit system of 120 to 130 credits for an undergraduate education.
  2. Reducing the number of courses that instructors teach each semester. However, it is important that reducing the teaching workload does not create financial disadvantages for teachers. This change might be accomplished by paying teachers a total combined salary/income that adequately supports them for working a full work week of approximately 40 hours that includes professional responsibilities of required teaching, research, and service to one’s home institution. With a revised compensation system, teachers would not require outside jobs. It is crucial that the number of courses taught be independent of salary/income.
  3. Changing the reward system so that a teacher’s merit-based pay and other financial rewards are based on conducting professional service (advising students, instructional development, and faculty governance) and doing research, in addition to teaching, at one’s home institution.
  4. Instituting instructor development and evaluation programs as the basis for promotion beyond the position of lecturer. The department chairperson might consider conducting an annual evaluation that focuses on performance and is related to increases for merit that is reflected in one’s base pay. The promotion program might take into consideration criteria related to evidence of student learning outcomes, course evaluations by students, quality of publications, conference presentations, course development, research funding, effective links with industry, and service to the department and institution.
  5. Creating faculty handbooks that clearly define procedures and steps for the reward system (e.g., promotion, recognition, merit-based pay, and tenure).
  6. Establishing Centers of Excellence in Teaching and Learning at each university (with the support of VNU and MOET resources). It is important that these Centers have experienced staff and both written and electronic resources to provide pedagogical, instructional, and professional development support. These Centers could potentially offer targeted workshops and other training activities by international professionals, who have general skills in pedagogy and instructional design and development as well as specific expertise related to teaching particular content areas such as computer science, electrical engineering, and physics.
  7. Offering opportunities for administrators and faculty to go abroad for study or professional programs to observe first hand the use of active learning and other effective pedagogical practices.
  8. Providing up-to-date printed and electronic resources (books, journals, etc.) for faculty and students to facilitate teaching, learning, and research. This might be accomplished by working cooperatively with MOET and VNU.
  9. Providing teachers with adequate access to high speed/bandwidth Internet and an adequate number of up-to-date computers for instruction.
  10. Modernizing laboratory facilities and equipment so that it is possible to develop experiments, exercises, and projects that promote higher order thinking and problem solving skills.
  11. Creating an Institutional Effectiveness Plan (IEP) that provides strategies, tactics, timelines, and criteria for making the improvements that are deemed of the highest priority.
Taken together, these activities potentially would not only create favorable working conditions to attract and retain new ambitious, well-trained faculty coming back to Vietnam from abroad, but would also better prepare university students of Vietnam to compete at the same level of students from top universities worldwide.

Program Level

The main purpose of the Undergraduate Education Project was to assess the current conditions of teaching and learning in computer science, electrical engineering, and physics at four select Vietnamese universities and, as a result, to produce models for the improvement of higher education in Vietnam that might be adopted across academic fields and institutions. The pilot projects at the program level provide potential models for improvement in undergraduate teaching and learning, undergraduate curriculum and courses, instructors, graduate education and research, and assessment of student learning outcomes. A scenario for change led by the departments at the program level might include the following activities.
  1. Undergraduate teaching and learning projects that focus on: (a) raising the level of learning from rote memorization of factual information to higher order thinking abilities; (b) incorporating active learning strategies into class discussions; (c) requiring graded homework that is used to provide feedback on student learning; and (d) incorporating homework grades, attendance, and class participation into the final grade.
  2. Undergraduate curriculum and course projects that focus on the consolidation of courses in order to conform with typical credit systems at top level universities worldwide, consisting of 120 to 130 credits for an undergraduate education. Such a consolidation would reduce the number of courses students take and that instructors teach each semester.
  3. Curricula and courses that include educational activities that give students applied hands-on experience and practice in the form of integrated laboratory exercises, design-and-build projects, and problem-based learning.
  4. Development of courses that include only those topics relevant to a given area, based on a review of course syllabi from leading, internationally recognized programs of study.
  5. Courses that include opportunities for the development of oral and written communication and presentation skills, team work, problem solving, project management, critical thinking, and building self-confidence.
  6. Professional development opportunities for junior and senior instructors to improve their discipline specific knowledge and skills. Both Vietnamese and international experts can provide in-service education of current instructors, including targeted workshops and other training activities in discipline topics and pedagogy related to teaching particular content areas in computer science, electrical engineering, and physics.
  7. Ways to provide teachers first hand experience with courses taught by leading foreign professors. This might be accomplished by providing opportunities for faculty to engage in short-term development activities, such as those suggested by the Recommendations for Vietnam University Advanced Program Site Visitors to Exemplary Programs in the U.S. (Appendix 13), and long-term study abroad opportunities to obtain advanced degrees, such as VEF Fellowships.
  8. Short- and long-term professional development opportunities for instructors in order to provide them with the foundation to enhance the delivery of graduate education and the development of research. As a result, graduate curricula and courses will be brought up to the same level of top universities worldwide in both content and teaching and learning methods by emulating the best programs world-wide.
  9. Means to help instructors develop and implement measures to evaluate student learning (e.g., homework assignments, quizzes, projects, group work, port folios, and capstone exams and projects). This is vital to the improvement of higher education since the evaluation of student learning outcomes starts at the program and course level,
Ways to require programs to revise their curricula and to require instructors to revise their course syllabi based on intended student learning outcomes. It is essential that course evaluations and program reviews be based on the accomplishment of student learning outcomes, which would then guide the continuous improvement of courses and programs.

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