Online Education during COVID-19 and Beyond is funded by the Australia-ASEAN Council of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Australian Government. Photo courtesy of the organising board

HÀ NỘI — Academics from the ten ASEAN countries will discuss the challenges they have faced delivering online teaching during COVID-19 through an international online education hosted by Australia’s University of Tasmania in June and September.

The project, entitled 'Australia-ASEAN Academics Forum: Online Education during COVID-19 and Beyond', is funded by the Australia-ASEAN Council of 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 in the School of Education at the University of Tasmania in Australia.

Through a series of webinars and interviews, academics from Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Việt Nam will discuss the mutual benefits of engaging in an academics forum to enhance online teaching in higher education in both Australian and Southeast Asian contexts.

The leader of the project, Dr Vinh To, a Vietnamese-Australian academic at the University of Tasmania, said: “Having a deep connection with Việt Nam made me more aware of my responsibility to make contributions to the Southeast Asian region."

“COVID-19 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," she said.

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.

“The project also aims to support the Australian government’s international relations policy and the Australia-ASEAN Council’s people-to-people links 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 begin in June this year, with rounds of webinars taking place in June and September. The webinars will be available to 300 academics or more and lecturers in the focus disciplines in Việt Nam and other Southeast Asian countries are invited to register at australiaasean.org/asean-information-and-consent.

Registration will be closed by April 30. — VNS