International Webinar in Recap
EDUCATORS FROM 25 UNIVERSITIES IN 8 NATIONS DISCUSS ON EDUCATION ONLINE
Professor Bas Baskaran – Deakin University’s Pro Vice-Chancellor for International Research Partnership shared about Deakin’s experience in the more than 40-year history of implementing online learning programs. As one of Australia’s leading universities, Deakin ranks in the top 10 in the world for offering MOOC courses. Professor Baskaran emphasized that online will be the future of higher education and it exists in parallel with traditional education, which is based on offline class and in-campus activities.
Professor Takako Ochi of Gunma University (Japan) focused on using an online platform to maintain interaction for students. Gunma University also announced in the conference the cooperation with FUNiX to deploy Smart campus to campus (SCC) program, bringing all activities of student exchange and training cooperation on an online platform of FUNiX.
During the open discussion, the three biggest concerns of the participants were:
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- 45% of participants have the concern on “Communication & interaction between students and teacher is the biggest challenge of online education”
- 32% face challenges in Maintaining students motivation during online study
- 16% shared the difficulties in Delivering practical component
Regarding the issue of maintaining motivation and ensuring interaction between teachers and students, the participants made some comments such as:
- It’s better to have a constant and cross-platform connection between teachers and students.
- Teachers should create an active learning environment in which there are as many activities for learners as possible.
- The duration of the lesson should be reduced to less than 1 hour because it is difficult to maintain interaction for many hours continuously.
Following the opinion of Professor Schedler – representative of FUNiX – Director of FUNiX Global, Cuong Hoang also shared that at FUNiX, online training is not just about forcing students to sit in front of laptops to look at learning materials and do exercises. It should be an active student community, where they can interact regularly on an online platform. Students play game shows, debate, and work on projects together in a fully online environment.
At the end of the webinar, participants agreed on the establishment of an international network to share experiences on building highly interactive online programs.
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