CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION 1.1 Research Background
Nowadays, people are familiar with the internet in general and E-Teaching/Learning System (ET/LS) in particular. The Internet is one the most useful technologies which affect and facilitate nearly every aspect of modern life, especially in education. The internet has had an enormous impact on education since it provides both lecturers and students access to information and communication far easier (Hartshorne and Ajjan 2009). ET/LS is a method of learning communicating through the internet in the way that computer-based training incorporates technologies to support students to interact with learning contents designed on the basis of teaching methods and managed by electronic systems. According to Cyber Universities, nearly 90% of universities in Singapore use ET/LS as part of their training and in the US this figure is over 80%.
ET/LS has been proved to meet the demands of the learners, as well as completely transformed the way in which learning is imparted to students in universities. ET/LS accommodates students’
needs by providing them relevant, mobile, self-paced, and personalized content, while they can learn at their own comfort and requirement. ET/LS has not only improved higher education pedagogical approach and has resulted in numerous new innovations in learning concepts (Sun, Tsai et al. 2008, Wang and Wang 2009). Many academic organizations adopt ET/LS because it facilitates training, enhances time and cost savings such as travelling, printed materials, and laboratory costs (Welsh, Wanberg et al. 2003, Zhang and Nunamaker 2003, Ruiz, Mintzer et al.
2006)
The "miraculous" development of ET/LS is rooted from firstly the fact that Vietnamese in general are very interested in education and training. According to the annual report, the level of government spending for this sector is equivalent to 20% of the total budget expenditure. 47% of Vietnamese people’s expenditure is on education (according to Taylor Nelson market research).
Secondly, according to the report of Vietnam E-Commerce Department, the number of Internet users in the country currently ranges from 37-40 million; on average each person spends about 2 hours per day to access the Internet (accounting for 31.5 % of the total time of using the media, this rate is increasing especially in young people). As Vietnamese people are increasingly using the Internet, there are greater opportunities for various types of ET/LS platforms. Thirdly, Vietnam
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is in the golden population period with 50% of the total population being in the age group of 15-64. Young people with progressive thoughts are willing to adopt new learning methods to replace the traditional way of learning. In addition, many university students find their learning experience too rigorous and inflexible. Too many lectures, impractical and theoretic learning materials are what they often mention as disadvantages of conventional schooling. ET/LS offers many practical benefits as learners can chose to study anywhere, anytime provided that Internet connection is available. Studying right from home will save much time and effort and allow students plenty of time to participate in practical activities related to their chosen fields apart from their coursework.
Moreover, online education can help students connect with qualified teachers everywhere without the huge conflicts in schedule that otherwise would greatly hinder in the traditional classroom.
However, EL/TS in Vietnam is quite a long story. Before 2000, ET/LS was not focused and there were few researches and study related to this field. In 2000, to efficiently exchange and integrate with the global and regional education system, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) first announced its Master Plan for ICT in education for the period 2001-2005. Then, ET/LS began its early stage of adoption process in Vietnamese education institutions. As the government put the top priority is the infrastructure development and IT training, since 2007, especially during the school year 2008-2009, Vietnam has invested heavily in ET/LS, with an approximately amount of 50 million US dollars. IT has been decreed to be a priority in education reform in the national agenda through the Vietnamese government resolution 49/CP and the recent Directive No. 9772/BGDĐT-CNTT (Dang and Robertson 2010). There have been many projects trying to implement ET/LS in order to foster educational innovations. Statistics collected in March 2014 showed that ET/LS market in Vietnam had an incredibly growth rate (46%), even higher than China, Thailand and Malaysia. In addition, Vietnam has been a member of in Asia E-Learning Network (AEN) with the participation of Ministry of Education and Training, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and University of Technology. It points out that Vietnamese government put emphasis on ET/LS investment, although Vietnam is still in the early stage of the adoption process when compared with other countries in the same region.
With the joining of Vietnam into WTO and the more profound integration into the global economy, Vietnam's education is facing challenges to equip future citizens with comprehensive
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capacity, intellect and self-learning skills to upgrade themselves in increasingly fierce competition environment. In Vietnam, it is now possible to find ET/LS programs across three main channels:
those created by schools in the national education system, those introduced into Vietnam from foreign sources and those designed to cater the demand of a certain company or organization. With the explosion of technology, students in universities need to learn many new science subjects, with a huge amount of information. How students get access to materials, consume, discuss and share those contents is remarkably changed thanks to this digital revolution. Therefore, teaching method and learning environment also need to be adjusted. Lecturers now play a role as an instructor who guides, while the learners need to be more active to acquire knowledge themselves. It has been shown that Vietnamese families spend 47% of their budget on education. Furthermore, about 50 million Vietnamese students use Internet, which accounts for 53% of the population. In this context, using ET/LS not only helps teachers effectively deliver all the contents, easily manage their teaching process, will help teachers improve their ability to use new methods, but also encourage students to actively explore new things and promote initiatives. Vietnam was ranked number 5 in 2013-2018 Top Ten Worldwide Self-paced eLearning Five-year Growth Rates by Country.
Figure 1-1: 2013-2018 Top Ten Worldwide Self-paced eLearning Five-year Growth Rates by Country (Source: Ambient Insight 2014)
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There are now two kinds of implementing ET/LS in universities in Vietnam: online learning and blended learning. Online learning is a form of learning that is carried out entirely on the electronic educational network with the management systems. On the other hand, blended learning is the combination of online learning and tradition classroom. This means beside face-to-face learning method, online learning is used as an effective tool to support teaching and learning process. The advantage is with an online system of clearly designed, oriented lectures, students can easily identify contents to study at their convenience, simultaneously ensure the interaction between teachers and students, and between students themselves. That is one of the reasons why blended learning is immensely popular in Vietnamese universities, even in many countries with first-class education. In this research, my scope will include both kinds of ET/LS.
How Vietnamese universities have implemented ET/LS within their academic and institutional environment is still a controversial issue. Although the importance of ET/LS implementation in universities has been nationally recognized, and ET/LS has been widely adopted for several years, there is lack of success. It keeps resulting in failure when universities try to integrate ET/LS into their university systems. The question why many ET/LS projects have not gained the expected results needs to be addressed. Vietnamese scholars have explained that projects failed due to various reasons other than technical factors. In the learners’ perspective, ET/LS requires them self-study, motivation to self-practice, and teamwork. Due to the conventional passive learning style and the overloaded schoolwork, most students do not find it particularly compelling to switch to ET/LS. On the other hands, even some eager learners who live in remote areas still do not have Internet access to join in such courses. Regarding the construction of learning resources: Designing well-qualified ET/ LS courses is a demanding task to the currently overworked lecturers. Teacher factors far outweighed the school factors when it comes to failure of some experimental ET/LS programs. There are many difficulties teachers have to face that could affect their reception of ET/LS. Given the added responsibilities and little to no incentives, the teachers are reluctant to devote their effort to another full-time task. In addition, despite excellent professional skills and expertise, operating new tools such as video capturing, recording or designing software is new to most teachers. Therefore, it takes a considerable amount of time to familiarize themselves to the tools not to mention to utilize the functions to optimize the ET/LS content. Determining factors that influence lecturers’ adoption in universities in Ho Chi Minh City is crucial before any decision to invest heavily in a wide range of ET/LS initiatives is made.
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1.2 Motivation and Objective
Knowledge, high quality education and training become much easier to get access thanks to the booming of IT, the internet, especially EL/TS. These technological developments have opened the door for lecturers and students in colleges to changes in different scales in terms of teaching and learning. In Vietnam, education has been one of the sectors which are heavily invested. With this orientation focused, Vietnam has decided to put IT, especially ET/LS into all levels of education to innovate teaching methods, improve the quality of learning in all subjects to equip young people enough tools and skills for the information era. Ho Chi Minh City is not only the largest city, but also the business and financial hub of Vietnam. Thus, the implementation of ET/LS has prospered, partly due to the attention of the government, partly as an effort of IT enterprises to research and apply ET/LS.
Although the use of ET/LS to teach and learn is inevitable for both lecturers and students, the context of deploying ET/LS in colleges Ho Chi Minh City is complicated and not always successful. Determining factors that influence the adoption willingness of lecturers and students in colleges in Ho Chi Minh city is still under examination. Therefore, to deepen the insights, the research thesis proposes and empirically examines a research model to describe the adoption intention of ET/LS by considering such facets of technological and psychological. The research thesis is conducted to reach two objectives as follows.
(1) To propose a research model to describe the adoption intention of ET/LS for college teachers and students in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
(2) To empirically examine the research model and provide research findings, implications, and suggestions for ET/LS providers and college administrators.
1.3 Research Procedure
The purpose of this study is to delve into the acceptance of both lecturers and students to adopt E-Teaching/Learning system. In addition, the comparison the differences in those two types of
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users as moderating role is examined. After determining research topic and objectives, literature review is investigated in order to provide understanding of ET/LS in education in general and universities in particular, which helps confirm the scope of the study, as well as define the problems. Research method is a quantitative approach which uses survey questionnaire for data collection. Then, data analysis is conducted to give conclusions and suggestions based on the results. The research procedure is shown in Figure 1-2.
Figure 1-2: Research Procedure
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1.4 Thesis Overview
This research includes five main chapters, which is structured in the following way:
Chapter 1: Introduction - This chapter includes general background about the research and then explains research motivation and objectives, with overview of research procedure and structure of this study.
Chapter 2: Literature Review and Hypothesis Development - First part of this chapter features