HCM CITY — The Vietnam National University - Hồ Chí Minh City will continue to adopt conceiving-designing-implementing-operating (CDIO) as the framework for its member universities’ curriculum planning and outcome-based assessment until 2020.

At its conference held on Monday to review implementation of the CDIO Initiative since 2010, the university also called for adopting the framework for the country’s entire higher education system to develop an educational model appropriate for Industry 4.0.

The CDIO Initiative focuses on incorporating entrepreneurial thinking in technical programmes whose students are often very technically skilled and know how to solve well-defined and often non-realistic problems.

The initiative was designed as an innovative educational framework for producing the next generation of engineers.

But the VNUHCM has also adopted it for non-engineering majors at some member universities.

Assoc Prof Dr Nguyễn Hội Nghĩa, vice president of the VNUHCM, said the CDIO Initiative is a standard educational framework to help set up and carry out training programmes to achieve comprehensive development of knowledge, skills, virtue, and capacity.

Graduates from universities that have adopted the initiative have been able to work in other member economies of the ASEAN Economic Community and elsewhere in the world, he said.

Thirteen universities in Việt Nam have learnt about the CDIO for possible adoption while more than 100 universities around the world have already adopted it.

A representative of VNUHCM-University of Technology, whose mechanical engineering faculty was one of the  first two departments to adopt the initiative in 2009, said many enterprises have rated its alumni’s communication, teamwork and leadership skills highly.

According to VNUHCM-University of Social Sciences and Humanities, it has adopted the CDIO model in its journalism and communication, English linguistics and literature, and education management courses since 2015, and it has played a vital role in improving quality. – VNS