International online education forum during COVID-19

Dr Vinh To at the University of Tasmania (Photo courtesy of the organising board)

Hanoi - Lecturers in 10 Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam are invited to participate in an international online education forum to be hosted by Australia’s University of Tasmania in June and September this year.

The project, entitled Australia-ASEAN Academics Forum: Online Education during COVID-19 and Beyond, is funded by the Australia-ASEAN Council under the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Australian Government. It is led by a research team including Dr Vinh To, Professor Victoria Carrington, Professor Sharon Fraser, and Professor Monica Cuskelly from the School of Education at the University of Tasmania.

Through a series of webinars and interviews, the forum will invite academics from the 10 Southeast Asian nations, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, to discuss the readiness, practices and challenges they have faced delivering online lectures during COVID-19, and the mutual benefits of engaging in an academic forum to enhance online teaching in higher education in both Australia and Southeast Asia.

Vietnamese-origin project leader Vinh To said: “Having a deep connection with Vietnam made me more aware of my responsibility to make contributions to the Southeast Asian region.

“COVID-19 had required the majority of academics in Southeast Asia to move to online education for the first time. This was challenging in the many cases where all previous experience had been in traditional face-to-face teaching. This project aims to help improve participating ASEAN academics’ knowledge and skills to teach online.”

Academics from the University of Tasmania and selected universities in Southeast Asia will be invited to share examples of high quality online teaching practice in various disciplines - education, humanities and social sciences, health, ICT, business and economics.

“The project also aims to support the Australian Government’s international relations policy and the Australia-ASEAN Council’s people-to-people link objective, especially during COVID-19, by establishing and fostering the multilateral relationship between academics and institutions in Southeast Asia and Australia for ongoing partnership and collaboration,” Dr To said.

The project will officially begin in June this year, with rounds of webinars taking place in the same month and September. The webinars will be available to 300 academics or more, and lecturers in the focus disciplines in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries are invited to register at this link. https://australiaasean.org/asean-information-and-consent/

For more information, please visit the project website

https://australiaasean.org

Deadline for registration is 30 April, 2021.