Message from the President of NLU:

“The process of higher education internationalization is one of the key strategies of Nong Lam university aligning with its vision of regional and global integration. The CALOHEA outcomes hitherto are significant instruments to accelerate the process and should be further disseminated for better application in curriculum development, syllabus redesign and quality assurance.”

The institutional-level workshop on the CALOHEA project results was successfully held by CALOHEA - NLU Team on 16^th April 2024 with the participation of Quality Assurance Department, Academic Affairs Department, International Relations Department, and Academics from the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Technical Education.

The workshop emphasized CALOHEA Project contributions to the process of education internationalization among ASEAN universities, the ultimate benefits of which will enhance student mobility through recognition mechanisms, facilitating student exchange, scholarship, prospective career opportunities. The three recognition mechanisms developed by the project can also benefit higher education institutions (HEIs), faculty and non-academic staffs of HEIs, as shown in the chart below. 

The presentations focus on the three Recognition Mechanisms (RM):  

1.       RM 1 presents the last version of Teacher Education Reference Framework as a result of varied stages of synthesis from the institutional frameworks, feedback from employers, alumni, undergraduates, and recommendations from different national meetings across participant countries.   

The Framework introduces seven dimensions with subdimensions and is divided into three categories: Knowledge, Skills and Responsibility.

Dimension 3: Communication (Excerpt from the Teacher qualification & Reference Framework, Version 9).

The framework can be applied to different levels:

-       Regional Level – the framework as regional reference tool only includes the essential knowledge, skills, and responsibilities for teacher education graduate of an ASEAN institution of higher learning.

-       Country Level – the framework may be adapted to reflect a country-specific version for nationally mandated feature for teacher education.

-       Institutional Level – the framework can be used as one of the bases of ASEAN teacher education institutions in identifying the fundamental or baseline KSRs and later enrich these with their respective institutional features or enhancements.

2.       RM 2: Student workload (SWL) includes workload during contact hours in class and independent work students are supposed to do out of the class, the latter of which remains unknown to academics like an underwater iceberg. The project offers 4 tools to measure student workload. The results show there are some gaps between the academics’ expectations for students’ workload and the actual workload the students have carried out. Workload measurement should therefore be implemented as a part of the education process and introduced in course syllabi. This is to ensure comparable workload and quality of courses as required for degree recognition.

3.       RM3: Authentic Assessment (AuA) is defined as a type of assessment of students’ application of knowledge and skills in a real-world context. The presentation illustrated inspirational exemplars of authentic tasks and introduced different tools to gain student feedback. A variety of authentic tasks have been applied and assessed to different courses in English Language Studies of FFL-TE. The reports of Authentic assessment showed positive feedback from the students involved and recommended further application to all program courses.   

CONCLUSIONS OF THE DISCUSSION:

After the discussion, three important conclusions are drawn as follows:

1.       More workshops on authentic assessment and workload measurement should be held with more academics from different faculties. Mr. Vo Van Viet, head of QA Department “placed an order” for two presentations on SWL and AuA at upcoming training workshops on syllabus design in June. These presentations will focus more on the research tools of SWL measurement and clarify AuA with inspirational exemplars of authentic tasks. 

2.       The QA Department will also consider including student workload measurement in their regular surveys of students’ feedback. This will raise further awareness among undergraduates on WL and serve as a washback on academics’ concerns.

3.       The FFL-TE is planning faculty meetings to discuss further exploitation of CALOHEA results in improving its program learning outcomes and redesigning course syllabi. It is approved that successful application of the three RMs would result in undergraduates’ recognition of study periods and whole degrees, their workload being fully accounted for, and achievement of the desired program learning outcome through AuA. 

4.       Teacher workload was also raised during the discussion. Designing authentic tasks and planning measurable workload may also increase teacher workload if not applied efficiently. Further research should be done on strategic and systematic implementation of the RMs, to enhance qualified student workload and ensure recognized values for all stakeholders.

      
Calohea-NLU Team and Representatives from QA, AA, and IR Staffs and FFL-TE.

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