Students' Experiences of Teaching and Learning Reforms in Vietnamese Higher Education

1. Higher education teaching-learning reforms and the importance of students’ learning experience 2. Higher education reforms in Vietnam: Context, foci, and challenges 3. Building a favourable learning environment for students at Vietnamese universities 4. Facilitating the transition of first-year students into the university: a case study 5. Students’ experience with the use of credit-based training system 6. Student-centered teaching: current practices and obstacles 7.The use of ICT in teaching and learning in Vietnamese universities 8.The impact of at-home international education on graduates’ employability and career prospects 9. Current assessment practices and the washback effect on students’ learning 10. Work placement practices: Students’ learning outcomes and influential factors 11. Extracurricular activities as informal learning: facilitators and inhibitors 12. The values of undertaking university education in Vietnam 13. Teaching and learning reforms in Vietnamese universities: the way ahead

Biography

Tran Le Huu Nghia (PhD) is currently a research fellow in work-integrated learning and graduate employability at the Australian National University’s College of Business and Economics. He is also an honourable research fellow at Ton Duc Thang University (Vietnam). He received the Erasmus Mundus scholarship to complete the Master of Lifelong Learning: Policy and Management (2007-2009) provided by Aarhus University (Denmark), Bilbao University (Spain) and Institute of Education (the United Kingdom). Then as an Endeavour Postgraduate Awardee (2012-2016), he completed his Ph.D., with a focus on higher education studies, at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has produced several research outputs, including two books published by Routledge and articles in high impact journals such as Higher Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, and Teaching in Higher Education. His research interests include teaching and learning for employability, work-integrated learning, teacher education, international education, and teaching English as a second language.

Ly Thi Tran (PhD) is a professor in the School of Education, Deakin University, Australia and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Her research focuses on internationalization of education, international students, international graduate employability, learning abroad, and Vietnamese higher education. Ly has published extensively on topics related to international education and Vietnamese higher education. Her books and papers have won a range of awards, including the International Education Association of Australia Excellence Award for Best Practice/Innovation in International Education for the book on new pedagogies in teaching international students published by ACER Press.

"Given the rising economic development and international standing of Vietnam, this book represents a valuable contribution to the literature on higher education reforms in South East Asia. Focusing on teaching and learning reforms in Vietnamese higher education since the early 2000s, the book provides nuanced insights into the contextual realities of reforms in the HE system from a unique angle – students’ experiences and perspectives.

The core of this book is made of thirteen chapters, which is an excellent combination of theoretical discussions, evidence-based analysis of the impacts of various reforms and recommendations for improving teaching and learning practices. It is a comprehensive discussion of reform policies and empirical evidence about the purposes, the context, the key dimensions and the challenges of teaching and learning reforms in Vietnamese higher education. It represents a compelling read for higher education institutions, scholars, policy makers and practitioners alike." -Ly Pham, Member of Vietnam National Committee for Education and Human Resource Development, Vietnam

"This book makes a distinctive contribution to the literature on higher education in Vietnam. It focuses on the teaching and learning experiences of university students at a time of slow but significant higher education reform. The authors draw upon a rich database of questionnaire and interview data to throw light on how students experience various aspects of the teaching and learning environment. There is currently no other publication on higher education in Vietnam that rivals the book for the comprehensiveness of its coverage of the impact of the reform process on university students. The book is also remarkable for the rigour of analysis of each of its chapters.

The book will serve for many years as a standard reference point for insights about the experience of being a university student in Vietnam. It will also hopefully inspire a new generation of higher education scholars in Vietnam to value the importance of documenting and analysing the experiences of key actors within the sector. The authors deserve acclaim for the ambitiousness of their project and the thoroughness of its execution. This book is highly significant as a contribution to understanding the higher education reform process in Vietnam." – Martin Hayden, PhD, Professor of Higher Education, Southern Cross University

"A timely and complete volume addressing the major issues and agendas that developing countries have faced in terms of mega transformation of teaching and learning in higher education for the 21st Century" -Sheng-Ju Chan, Professor at the Graduate Institute of Education, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan