Virtual lab solves the problem for practice in online learning

    In the period when the COVID 19 pandemic is increasingly complicated, the universities have switched from face-to-face to online training mode. One of those challenges is teaching practical subjects. To solve that problem, the virtual laboratory was developed. The virtual lab is programmed with block graphics. These models are designed to resemble physical models so that students will not be surprised when practicing on real devices. The link to used the Virtual lab is below:

link: https://www.vlab.co.in/

Figure 1. Broad Areas of Virtual Labs

    We think that applying virtual labs is one of the solutions to solve the problem of students' practical skills during the epidemic period. However, when the epidemic situation is under control, a virtual laboratory can be used for students to practice before going to the physics laboratory, which will reduce risks in practice safety and learn the principle first by the method. flipped classroom.

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H5P - creating rich interactive content for lectures (P1. Begin)

 

H5P (HTML5 Package) is a platform that allows users to easily create, share and reuse content in the HTML5 environment, available in all Platforms.

The goals for the H5P project are:

-Connect people who create, use and share H5P libraries and share skills.

-Makes content easy to deploy and easy to integrate in most online platforms (CMS, LMS, LCMS and others)

-Support many functions to help increase the efficiency of online teaching and learning such as: Fill in the blanks, Find words, Interactive Books, Interactive Videos and many other improvements.

H5P Interfactions

Interactive content by adding the H5P

To get started with H5P, see the following link (type Interactive Book) instructions on creating an account and using H5P at H5P.org

Link: https://h5p.org/node/1199263

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LHU-ONLINE EXAMINATION SYSTEM

Because the Covid-19 pandemic has changed drastically, affecting the lives of many people around the world and in Vietnam. Distance and no mass gatherings are necessary at this time. However, that does not mean that all our activities stop. LHU students have a gap when the final exam has not completed all subjects in all disciplines. Faced with that situation, in order to organize the online exam methodically and in accordance with the current management system of LHU (LMS system, ME system), LHU has developed a new module (ME-Online Examination). ME-Online Examination allows teachers to easily create exams (combining an existing teaching-learning schedule management system), manage logins and submissions. In particular, the new module also shows students' activities in the process of taking an online exam on a computer. This helps increase transparency while taking the student's online test at home.

Let's Join Hands in Combating COVID-19.

LHU-OE integrates into ME system

The teacher administers the exams created for the classes

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IMPROVING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF STUDENTS' PROGRESS ASSESSMENT IN A BLENDED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AT LAC HONG UNIVERSITY

This paper has been published in Journal of Technical Education Science, No.62 (02/2021) 

Phuong V. D. Van, Hien T. Lam, Lam T. Nguyen, Truong P. Le

Lac Hong University.

ABSTRACT
Thanking to the application of digital technology in education, students are obtaining outstanding benefits such as diverse learning resources, more learning flexibility in both time and place. However, besides these advantages, students must wisely avoid inappropriate information sources and trends by selecting and following the right way to receive, learn and process information. In the competence-development-learning model, students become the center being proactive in selecting information, analyzing and proposing solutions for problems with support from lecturers and reference resources. Many questions exist and require educational institution and faculty to answers such as how to assess students' understanding and if it is in the right direction; how to see students’ progress to assist students positive change; how to conduct formative assessment throughout the entire student progress instead only summative ones (in final exam, final product). This paper reflects the practical results to answer these above questions when applying ePortfolio in assessing students’ performance in the blended learning environment at Lac Hong University. The research is conducted as a part of EMVITET Erasmus+ project.
Keyword: ePortfolio, Formative assessment, Education 4.0, Digital pedagogy

CONCLUSIONS

From the above results, it can be seen that students who have recorded, implemented and updated additional information such as learning knowledge, receiving and following comments on ePortfolio actually have better learning results, especially in presentation skills. Teachers are able to follow-up, support and evaluate students' competencies formatively and summatively regarding the ability to analyze and solve problems, ability to present and communicate. Students themselves express better understanding by responding to the requirements in their own expression. The application of ePortfolio for assessment not only improves efficiency and accuracy but also gradually builds up students' lifelong learning skills. Level 1 competencies including listening, watching and taking notes, storing content on demand periodically by weeks and months are firmly achieved. Moreover, a habit at level 2, that students go deeper into searching information, analyze and comment on the content through exercises and projects with good time arrangement for learning activities, is formed. This is a stepping stone to achieve level 3 easily. Level 3 provides an overview of students' abilities through knowledge acquired by topics or products on their ePortfolio, students' strengths, as well as their future directions and goals. Obviously, the approach to gain knowledge and resources is gradually changing. The role of the teachers and learners have also changed in blended learning environment. Thus, the method of teaching and learning must also be changed. Being the center, the learners become more proactive, combine the surrounding factors, e.g. the teachers or the coaches, other resources and environment to achieve results, skills and products. Now, the teachers are no longer the main character as in the traditional teaching model. However, because they have a great impact on the student's learning, improvement and development process, they must also change a lot. ePortfolio is highly suggested to put into a comprehensive application among Lac Hong University students in particular and Vietnamese schools in general. Although in the first stage, students face many difficulties in presenting knowledge and responding to requests according to their personal style, it can be seen that ePortfolio is a good means for students to chain all their knowledge and work. This is also a tool to improve presentation skills and the channel for objective and accurate assessment.

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Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and power tools support Communication, collaboration and creativity (P1)

Can you hear me? - we need to communicate. 

Should we work together to go faster and farther? - we need to cooperate.

How or new? - We need creativity and Critical thinking

As mentioned in "Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Leve" by Arthur Chickering and Stephen C. Ehrmann [1], the first three of the Seven Principles of Good Practice are "Good Practice Encourages Contacts Between Students and Faculty" - communicating; "Good Practice Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students" - Collaboration and "Good Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques" - creativity

Web 2.0, Web 3.0 platform with powerful tools for Communication, collaboration, and creativity for Higher Education and lifelong learning

Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 with their differences [2]

WEB 1.0	WEB 2.0	WEB 3.0
Mostly Read-Only	Wildly Read-Write	Portable and Personal
Company Focus	Community Focus	Individual Focus
Home Pages	Blogs / Wikis	Live-streams / Waves
Owning Content	Sharing Content	Consolidating Content
Web Forms	Web Applications	Smart Applications
Directories	Tagging	User Behaviour
Page Views	Cost Per Click	User Engagement
Banner Advertising	Interactive Advertising	Behavioural Advertising
Britannica Online	Wikipedia	The Semantic Web
HTML/Portals	XML / RSS	RDF / RDFS / OWL

How does power tools support communication, collaboration, and creativity? you need to ask, do and answer yourself.

• Why do we use tools? What is the reason?
• Find the best tool for the problem (there are plenty of tools on the internet, you should review it or ask for advice)
• Then practice and practice with the tools. Get the feedback and evaluate how they support? Is it okay to use or change someone else?

In (P2), I will go into more detail about tools in web 2.0 to improve communication skill.

#LHU #Eramus+ #EMVITET

 

References

[1] Chickering, Arthur & Ehrmann, Stephen. (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin. 49. 3-6.

[2] Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 with their difference, https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/web-1-0-web-2-0-and-web-3-0-with-their-difference/

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Project Based Learning in Covid

 The project-based learning method makes students more active in thinking.

Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget once said: "Knowledge is the result of experience". Indeed, "learning with practice" is the fastest way to help us get closer to the civilization of humanity.

Because I was an engineer at a multinational company. Reality-based learning will help students apply knowledge or learn more deeply about real problems.

Smart thermometer system uses artificial intelligence. Prevent cross-contamination. Helping the community to cope with COVID-19

Discussion of a group of students on building Smart Farm program

The students discuss about designing a system

This may reflect what learners have learned, how they learned and what they learned for. In addition, the instructor can give positive feedback to each project to help students improve and do better in the future.

[Studens - University - Industry]

After developing the application, the enterprise realizes the practical application and applicability. This project has already been deployed to connect to the user.

Project in researching and building

The product have worked at Dong Nai hospital

At Lac Hong University

From projects, and the Student - School - Business connection makes new connections. Helping students to apply knowledge into practice to solve problems encountered in life.

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Applying the Powtoon tool to create video tutorials

 In this example, we make two videos. one video introduces some modern teaching methods such as project-based learning and the Flipped classroom and another video we introduce the learning outcome of the course  Also, these videos are examples of applying the Powtoon tool to create video tutorials effectively and quickly. These Videos makes by Phan Phuoc and Le Truong

To make a video like this example visit the link below: https://www.powtoon.com/

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How to make Interactive Video

 There are many digital tools for creating interactive videos. In this video, we will show you how to use the H5P integrated in LMS (Moodle) to build interactive video. This Video make by Ta Nguyen.

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Meeting online tools

 There are many support tools for distance learning. In this article, the author introduces some tools for online meetings.

1. Zoom 
Zoom is the digital tool based video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, collaboration, chat, and webinars across mobile devices, desktops, telephones, and room systems. Zoom has a security issue but I think zoom is going to solve this issue.

Fig1. Online meeting with Zoom software

link:
 https://zoom.us/
2. Webex

Cisco Webex is a solution for video conferencing, online meetings, screen share, and webinars. 

link:
 https://www.webex.com/

3. Skype Meeting

Skype Meeting is a free conference meeting with up to 50 people powered by Skype. No sign ups or downloads required, simply generate your unique link and share it with all.

link:
 https://www.skype.com/en/free-conference-call/

4. Google meet

 Google meet has developed by Google. This tool not only makes a video meeting but also share your video, desktop, and presentation with teammates.
link:
https://meet.google.com/

In addition, to understand I  made a small comparison of the three  online meeting software shown in the table below:

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It's so easy to follow student's learning process by LMS

In previous years, my colleagues and I had not enough data for assessment at the end of course. We used to get 10% for participant, 30% for self-study report and 60% for final exam, however it is really hard for teachers to manage the student’s learning process in whole course.

Fig 1. Grade for Q&A at the end of chapter

After deploying Learning Management System in my university we have more powerful tools for assessment. My colleagues, who feel uncomfortable of changes in pedagogy at the beginning, have to say “wonderful” because of they can keep the track of every activity in their class. Especially, the study still continues in the spread of COVID-19. They know exactly which student having problem in learning process by just one click on the “report menu”.

Everything from log-in status, activity, participant, statistics and events to competency breakdown. From that, teachers will help their student right the time when they face the problem in study. Furthermore, teachers have more evidences to make the assessment during the course.

Fig 2. Activity report

In my opinion, LMS is one of the most important platform for my teaching activity toward Education 4.0. For more information about the Education 4.0, you are invited to visit www.emvitet.org, the official website of EMVITET project which is funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

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Lac Hong Open Workshop and HAMK Design Factory

That was really interesting to visit and learn about the model of HAMK Design Factory today. The entrepreneurs, teachers and students work together in the collaborative environment to find out the solution for the authentic problems. The first year students are forced to join the project as a compulsory module in their curricula.

I think it's really interesting because I had the same idea when I built Lac Hong Open Workshop (LHOWS) in my university. It's quite similar when HAMK Design Factory and LHOWS was built to connect companies with students by co-working for innovation.
Comparing with operation of LHOWS, HAMK Design Factory has the professional process to help the first year students how to manage the project step by step from the beginning to the end of project.

The best thing I learn from this module is the teacher believe that the first year student can do and give them the challenge. I should apply this thinking and give my students more opportunities to face the authentic problems and directly work with the customer.

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