Phuong Hoai Nga, MA in Psychology, from The Olympia Schools, said that parents are worrief about online teaching because they don’t have confidence in the teaching method.

“It is understandable that parents are worried when their children have to sit for a long time in front of computer screen, which may affect their health, and are worried about the teaching/learning quality,” she said.

In fact, any form of teaching would be ineffective if three subjects of the process – students, parents and teachers – don’t have common purposes.

Parents think their children cannot concentrate during online lessons. But in fact, they may lose concentration even in offline classes.

Nga, though understanding parents’ worries, still believes that it is necessary to popularize online teaching, which is a growing tendency in the world, instead of discontinuing it when the pandemic is contained.

“Why don’t we teach and study online if parents have necessary conditions to support their children, teachers are capable of shifting to the new teaching method, and students are used to the new style of interactions,” she said.

Teachers need training

Chu Cam Tho from the Vietnam Academy of Education Science said that to teach/study online effectively, students need to be more responsible, while teachers need to be trained so that they can use technology and also change the way of organizing and providing documents.

Studies recommend that the content for online teaching needs to be designed to fit students’ ability to absorb knowledge and their learning style. It is necessary to provide reasonable doses of knowledge. There should not be interactions lasting more than 15 minutes on computer for each dose, and one online lesson should not last more than 90 minutes.

Online teaching: long-term solution

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Huu Do said Vietnam organized online teaching as a temporary solution during the pandemic, but with the outstanding advantages of this teaching method, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) is considering make online teaching a long-term solution, which can be supplementary to in-person teaching or replace it.

Do went on to say that MOET is building and supplementing the e-lesson plan system for different education levels, which could be used by schools, teachers and students for the long term. 

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