Paul McAfee, MBA
Keuka College, New York, United States of America
Tran Minh Tuan, BSc University of Science, VNU-HCM
Vu Hai Quan, PhD
University of Science, VNU-HCM
ABSTRACT
In the process of internationalization and globalization, Vietnam has considered education as a significant role for developing the labor force. One of the key strategies to generate the next workforce with modern knowledge and sufficient professional skills is a pedagogical method called experiential learning, based on practical use of knowledge. This paper will present two case studies about this method of education. These case studies discuss two collaborative education programs currently conducted at The University of Science Ho Chi Minh City (HCM). Analyzing the case studies, this paper will provide a theoretical framework and brief history of experiential learning, which is a component of student centered learning at the University of Science HCM. This paper also will present the project-based experiential learning methodology used in the two Keuka college courses and in AUT Capstone project courses at the University of Science HCM and the International School, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. The paper provides a summary of the results of an informal survey of University of Science HCM students’ reaction to this project-based experiential teaching methodology.
KEYWORDS
business education, competence-based instruction, computer sciences, experiential learning, information sciences, situated learning, student centered learning, project-based learning, Vietnam.
INTRODUCTION
Globalization is a key trend towards development for every nation. Realizing the significance of world commerce, Vietnam businesses have adopted globalization. In 1977, Vietnam officially became the 149th member of the United Nations. Since then, Vietnam has contributed to the world in a variety of areas, including culture, health, the world economy, and politics. High quality education plays an important role for a nation to integrate into the world community. Internationalization and globalization offer tremendous benefits to Vietnam’s education system. Cooperation in education with other nations helps to obtain positive achievements, including knowledge from diverse fields of study, new learning contexts, and opportunities for technology exchange. In 2007, to fulfil a rising need for
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teaching that is more effective and for education methods from foreign education systems, while taking advantage of local facilities, University of Science, Vietnam National University (VNU) HCM (HCMUS) initiated two international joint education programs. In these programs, HCMUS cooperates with foreign universities on co-designing integrated educational curricula that adapt to local society trends. These programs maintain and develop effective teaching methods, assessment standards, and national academic accreditation in their home countries and in Vietnam. HCMUS has launched two international joint programs; (1) Bachelor of Computer and Information Sciences in IT Service Science major with Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand, and (2) Bachelor of International Business in International Business Major with Keuka College, United States.
Bringing Western pedagogy to Vietnamese college students poses a complex set of challenges. This is true whether the partner university is in Auckland, New Zealand, or Penn Yan, New York, USA. There are distinct cultural differences, with the most notable being the collectivist culture of the Vietnamese students as compared to the individualist cultures of the New Zealand or American students. Education systems adapt to the national culture, but in joint education programs, a new culture is introduced. Students’ learning styles and teaching methods also differ. For example, Keuka College requires all students at its home campus to participate formally in 140 hours of outside experience during each year of study, usually as interns or part-time employees at local for-profit or non-profit organizations. Students at Keuka College in the USA expect to have opportunities to apply what they are learning in the classroom to real-life situations while they are still in college. Many Keuka College courses using experiential learning pedagogical tools in addition to lectures. Many Vietnamese university courses rely almost entirely on lectures and textbook study. To add to the challenge for our Vietnamese students, they are learning new English business vocabulary at the same time that they are trying to learn and apply new business concepts.
What are the objectives of university business or computer science educations? “A major goal of schooling is to prepare students for flexible adaptation to new problems and settings.”
(Bransford, J., Brown, A., and Cocking, R., 2000) In Ho Chi Minh City, Tran Quang Trung and Fredric William Sierczek conducted a study of 251 business and four Vietnamese universities titled “Skills development in higher education in Vietnam’” (Trung, T., and Swierczek, F., 2009) The purpose of this study was to “explore the status quo of skills development in universities in Vietnam, and to identify the factors that have impacts on skills development.” (Trung et al., 2009) Citing another study, they stated, “Developing employment-favorable skills for students is virtually ignored” (Oliver 2002, Institute of International Education 2004) Trung and Swierczek continued, “In general, lecturers are weak in terms of research skills and academic knowledge; lecturing and rote learning still predominate; interaction between students and teachers shows minimal progress.” (Trung et al., 2009) This paper explores potential pedagogical tools to instill more relevant skills in Vietnamese business and computer science students before graduation.
In order to fill the gap between skills needed by businesses and skills delivered to students in Vietnamese universities, we exploit the experiential learning approach with 2 case studies.
INTERNATIONAL JOINT PROGRAMS
Bachelor of Computer and Information Sciences
Since 2007, Auckland University of Technology (AUT), from New Zealand, has collaborated with HCMUS to develop the Articulation Program for Bachelor of Computer and Information Sciences, with the goal to support the undergraduates whose specialization is in the field of providing services for IT industry. The students will be equipped with efficient knowledge and
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skills to develop, operate, and maintenance computer systems, software, and network infrastructures in organizations and businesses.
By entering the program, the students obtain many opportunities to approach the modern education system and to gain knowledge in the field of Information Technology. After completing three and one half years of full time study at HCMUS, students will achieve the Bachelor Certificate issued by AUT. After the first two years, based on their studying aspiration, students can apply for the Articulation Program to complete their two final studying years at one of the Partner Universities overseas.
Bachelor of International Business
Keuka College, from the USA, first offered this business degree program in partnership with HCMUS in 2010. The joint goal is to equip students with the knowledge and skills of international business in a modern, dynamic, and competitive environment. The program provides a wide knowledge base with the necessary global business management skills.
Visiting lecturers from Keuka College teach at least twenty-five percent of course credits.
This provides the students with exposure to American business principles, and to an accredited American academic environment. The students complete a semester of 45 lecture hours in an intensive seven-week block.
In their third and fourth years, students may apply for a full tuition scholarship to attend Keuka College in the USA for one year. After completing three and one half years of study in HCMUS, students will receive the Bachelor of Science in Management with an International Business major from Keuka College.
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING APPROACH
In 1984, David A. Kolb published “Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development’” (Kolb, 1984) Kolb’s work began three decades of research and evaluation of experiential learning pedagogy. Education researcher Meena Chavan (2011) provides a detailed definition of “experiential learning” in her paper, “Higher Education Students’
Attitudes Towards Experiential Learning in International Business”:
Experiential learning involves a “direct encounter with the phenomena being studied rather than merely thinking about the encounter, or only considering the possibility of doing something about it. Experiential learning can be defined in terms of an instructional model, which begins with the learner engaging in direct ‘experience’ followed by reflection, discussion, analysis and evaluation of the experience” (Borzak, 1981: 9, quoted in Brookfield, 1983). “Experiential learning takes place when, a) a person is involved in an activity, b) he looks back and evaluates it, c) determines what was useful or important to remember, d) and uses this information to perform another activity” (Kolb, 1984). “Experiential learning can also be defined as a process by which the learner creates meaning from direct experience.”
(Dewey, 1938) (Chavan, 2011)
Theories of learning increasingly include direct experience as an important addition to classroom- and lecture-based learning. The goal of experiential learning is to enhance students’ ability to retain what they have learned beyond the time of their courses, and more importantly, to enhance students’ ability to apply (or transfer) what they have learned in future courses, and in future post-graduate work environments.
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International Business Background
Keuka College in the United States of America is considered a national leader in experiential, hands-on learning. Founded in 1890 on the shores of Keuka Lake in New York State, Keuka is a private institution offering affordable degree programs at the USA Keuka Lake campus, plus more than 30 community colleges and hospitals throughout New York State, four universities in China, and three universities in Vietnam. (“About Keuka College,” retrieved online from http://keuka.edu/about)
Starting in March 2012, Keuka College (USA) business degree lecturer Paul McAfee began testing project-based experiential learning activities in his courses in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The two courses in which he has applied this pedagogy consistently for the past two years in Vietnam are Leadership and Operations Management. The student learning objectives in each of these courses are suitable for the use of course-long projects from which the students can gain personal business and leadership experience.
In her Ph.D. thesis, education researcher Norene Pupo describes the purpose of undergraduate business education, “management education was developed with a very specific and concrete purpose – the replacement of familiar and unscientific administration with qualified managers knowledgeable in the behavioural sciences and adept in the use of the latest management techniques” (Pupo, 1984).
Writing recently about the current state of higher education in Vietnam, in the International Journal of English Language Education, describing a countrywide Master’s-level course titled
“Intercultural Communication,” taught within VNU since the early 1990s, researcher Hoang Huu Ngo stated, “However, a traditional theory-based approach is still used to teach this course including teacher-led classrooms for rote memorization.” (Ngo, 2014, p.215) Ngo went on to assert, “That makes the course ineffective and unpractical because too much theory is taught instead of practice and experience.” (Ngo, 2014, p.215) Ngo refers to
“Project-Based Learning” in her paper. Her research raises the question; does the traditional undergraduate lecture-based pedagogy achieve the goal of preparing young people to operate and manage effectively in businesses following their graduation?
Theoretical Framework for Experiential Learning
The theoretical framework for contemporary experiential learning derives from David Kolb, who presents the Lewenian model of experiential learning, illustrating the four-stage cycle;
concrete experience, observations and reflections, formation of abstract concepts and generalizations, and testing implications of concepts in new situations. (1984, p 22) See figure 1. Kolb combines the Lewenian model with Dewey’s model of learning (Kolb, 1984, pp 22-23) and Piaget’s model of learning and cognitive development. (Kolb, 1984, p 23) Other more recent researchers have identified specific business skills that are the outcomes of learning that are missing in some Vietnamese universities. (Trung et al., 2009)
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Figure 1. The Lewenian model, from Kolb (1984, Figure 2.1, p 21).
This figure illustrates the theoretical framework for experiential learning. Kolb integrates with Dewey’s (1938) model of experiential learning, and Piaget’s model of learning and cognitive development.
Experiential Learning in Keuka College Vietnam Courses
Over the past two years, Mr. McAfee has observed many classes taught within the Vietnam National University system in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City where the Vietnamese lecturer (and sometimes a Western lecturer) sits at a desk for the entire class period, reading from a laptop screen to the students. On occasion, the lecturer uses a chalkboard or whiteboard, and less frequently, a projector with slides or illustrations. In business education, although this pedagogical style could serve to teach students vocabulary and some analytic concepts and process, the question of preparation for life within a real business environment remains open. Do the students gain the skills they need from lecture-based pedagogy? Recently, a Human Resources manager at Vina Acecook in Ho Chi Minh City based a scathing critique of our Vietnamese Keuka College University of Science students on this pedagogical history during a student tour of the factory. The Human Resources Manager based her criticism on past students, and not on the group from the University of Science. The University of Science Keuka College students responded to the criticism by informing the manager of their experiential learning environment.
The first time Mr. McAfee taught Leadership, in Hanoi in March 2012, he observed the students’ tendency to memorize information from the textbook and lectures. Based on his three decades of executive-level international business management and leadership experience, Mr. McAfee believed that memorization would be an insufficient method to learn usable leadership skills. He therefore introduced a five-week long project-based experiential learning component to the Leadership course.
Keuka College undergraduate business courses, such as the Leadership course, involve 45 hours of student-teacher contact time. At the USA Keuka College campus, students complete a course in 14 weeks. However, to accommodate visiting lecturers like Mr. McAfee, the two universities in Vietnam provide the 45 lecture hour courses in seven weeks. For the Leadership course, Mr. McAfee used the first week as introduction to theory and processes, and the last week for the final assessments of learning, which included a final exam for the theory component, and group and individual presentations to demonstrate what the students had learned from the experiential component of their course. Weeks two through six combine textbook readings, lectures, and the project-based experiential learning component.
Structure of Project-Based Experiential Learning in Vietnam
Soon after starting to teach in Hanoi, Mr. McAfee discovered that his Vietnamese students have a natural sense of entrepreneurship, and that they can organize themselves quickly into effective working teams. For the experiential component of the Leadership course, and for all
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subsequent Leadership and Operations Management courses in Vietnam, Mr. McAfee organized each class into teams. Each class, which usually comprised between 40 and 50 students, had one CEO as the class project leader. The class CEO organized six teams, which were Finance, Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing, R&D and Purchasing, and Human Resources (for Leadership) or Operations (for Operations Management). Each team had a Vice President as a leader, and the classes were divided into teams of roughly equal size.
The students had five weeks to organize their businesses, deciding whether to sell a product that they would make or buy to resell, or a service that they would produce, such as a concert, buffet dinner, or computer game competition. Students had a $300 net income goal for the five-week projects. The students organized a community service project to use the income they generated to purchase supplies for a local organization, which usually was an orphanage, children’s hospital, or nursing home.
For these projects, the students received learning objectives based on the theories they were learning in their courses. The Leadership course student learning objectives included, among many other objectives, evaluation of leadership styles, situational leadership, and team member behaviors. The students maintained journals to record their experiences during the project. In the seventh week of each course, in addition to taking an exam to assess the students’ understanding of the leadership and teamwork theories, the students created and delivered final presentations. Each CEO and Vice President included every student on his or her team in the final presentation. Students reported on their project goals, activities, accomplishments, and challenges. All students also reported on what they learned individually in the context of leadership and teamwork, and they reported on what they would do to improve their personal leadership and teamwork performance in the future. It is this reporting on their leadership and teamwork related activities, and their reflection on what they would improve, that should enhance the student’s retention of their learning, and that should improve the student’s ability to transfer what they have learned to a post-graduation work environment. This reporting, which occurs continuously during the course as the students keep their journals, and at the conclusion of the course in the final presentations, represent the “Observations and reflections” stage of the Lewenian model from Kolb shown in Figure 1.
Students’ Evaluation of Project-Based Experiential Learning
At the end of the most recent Operations Management course at the University of Science HCM, Mr. McAfee surveyed his students to determine their attitudes toward the project- based experiential learning methodology. Students taking a course that includes the five- week class projects must work more hours outside of class than students who take the same course without the class project. Typically, the class project requires at least an additional five hours per week for each student.
Of 128 students in four classes, 37, or 29%, completed the survey. Not every student loves the class project. In response to the question, “I would rather take this same course without the class project,” 14 students (38%) agreed. However, in response to the question, “I learned more from the class project activity than I would have learned if we only had lectures and the textbook,” 62% of the students agreed. See Figure 2 below. Significantly, in response to the question, “I believe I will be able to use what I learned from a project-based class in future business roles, as compared to what I learned in a class with lectures and textbooks only,” 84% of the students agreed.
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Figure 2 provides University of Science HCM student evaluations on a five-point Likert scale of Keuka College courses that include project-based experiential learning activities. The rating averages relate to a total possible rating of 5.00.
Future Project-Based Experiential Learning Research in Vietnam
Following two years of testing project-based experiential learning at the International School, Vietnam National University (VNU), in Hanoi, and at the University of Science, Ho Chi Minh City, Mr. McAfee plans to conduct formal research for the Ph.D. in Education thesis that he will prepare for the State University of New York University at Buffalo, Graduate School of Education. This research will evaluate the addition of teaching methods that involve experiential learning within an undergraduate international business curriculum, within the Vietnam National University systems in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. As educators in business degree programs, we are teaching our students to enter business, hopefully in management or management development roles. The goal of Mr. McAfee’s research will be to establish empirically whether project-based experiential learning improves students’
understanding of the concepts they study, and enables students to transfer their knowledge to new situations. The research hypothesis will be that lecture-based teaching, combined with memorization of facts and concepts, is less effective by itself than project-based experiential applied learning, combined with lecture-based teaching, as a method to prepare students for business management roles.
The research questions will be:
1. Compared to the classical lecture-based teaching methodology, does the addition of an experiential learning project component improve students’ understanding and their ability to apply the knowledge?
2. Does the addition of experiential learning improve the student’s ability to transfer their knowledge to new environments, including to subsequent courses and to a business role during their undergraduate studies, or after they graduate?
The short-term benefit from this research can be to provide a framework for new business degree curricula that the VNU administration can offer to Vietnamese and Western lecturers teaching in their programs.
This research will not evaluate experiential tools used exclusively in the classroom, such as simulations or case studies. This research also will not evaluate other types of learning, often called service learning or vocational training, including internships. This research will not attempt to establish causes based on learning science, as some of the research on situated