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As stated in Decision 535/TTg by the Prime Minister on 03 November 1993 about the establishment of Hanoi Open University (HOU), one of HOU’s primary political duties is the foundation and development of different educational forms, especially distance education, to offer educational opportunities for everybody.
To fulfill the duty, since the early days HOU has made all its effort in researching, organizing and improving a network of distance education with 16 local branches all over the country. The number of students enrolling in this way of education has been increasing regularly every year with the reach to 30,000 in 2000.
Also since the beginning, media have been applied for distance education of HOU. A contract was signed between the university and the Science and Education Department - Vietnam Broadcasting station which offered HOU a regular program for distance training starting from 1997. After that HOU cooperated with National Television and Hanoi Broadcasting and Television in implementing several programs of vocational training, education universalization, English teaching, etc.
The over-five-year endeavor revealed the feasibility and effectiveness of the development of distance education to a wide range of people.
However, until 2000 there had been only the following training majors mostly of social science and humanity: Laws, Economics and Management, English. Those of technology were under implementation.
In 1996 FIT was assigned the responsibility for planning and implementing distance education. Over five years the faculty was created good conditions by HOU to develop this form of training in terms of training courses, seminars and international conferences hosted by UNESCO for key cadres as well as the application of information technology and communication (ITC) in distance education. Besides, for the best application of ITC in distance training the establishment of two centers at FIT was officially approved, i.e. the Equipments and System Management Center (ESMC) and the Center for Online Instructional Technology (COIT)
In 2000, HOU entrusted FIT with a long-term research which later in 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 became a scientific research of Ministry level. And since 2001, FIT has expanded System Management into distance training
In February 2001, FIT’s website for distance training named FITHOU-CYBERSCHOOL was born. It was initially located in the forum of the faculty’s main website: http://www.fithou.edu.vn and then moved to an international domain i.e. http://www.fihou.net/
During the early days, the website was simply a forum for exchanging learning information, discussion and study guide. Despite the lack of labor resources, equipments as well as finance which is not supported by any outside organizations, the enthusiasm and passion for working of lecturers, engineers within FIT-HOU in general and the engineers and interns (of courses from 99B until present) within COIT in particular has made FITHOU- CYBERSCHOOL become a “virtual university” of all aspects which was recommended on VDC’s Homepage as the first website in Vietnam to provide online training in IT, organize examination and grant university diploma.
FITHOU – CYBERSCHOOL contains all functions of a virtual university, including the following contents:
- Introduction and learner assistance
- Management and control of timetable for class, test and examination
- Knowledge impartation: online lectures, online tutorials
- Management of files and learning results
- Conferences, discussions and forum
- Internal exchange activities
Several other contents like enrolment registration, examination and testing, paper issuance, online certifying… have not been activated as the results of general regulations in training management by Ministry of Education and Training and by HOU.
FITHOU CYBERSCHOOL has received very positive responds from a wide range of students of all training systems in FIT, graduates and a number of students from other faculties and universities. The period of two years (2001-2003) marked the number of more than 2000 registrations and 100,000 accesses. Fithou.net is cited and linked at the official website of the Association of Asian Open University – AAOU – founded at Malaysia Open University (http://www.oum.edu.my) as well as the website of UNESCO of Asia Pacific.
As mentioned previously, since 2001, as the consequence of financial shortage FITHOU CYBERSCHOOL had to be put on an international domain which was free of charge for 12 months only and of a huge capacity for electronic learning resources. When the deadline came, the great amount of members and accesses of 2003 caused the withdrawal and grant of the domain to an oversea organization in distance training which belongs to the five top online universities of the world such as American Online, Phoenix Online etc. This break-down, consequently, can be seen as a pride to some extends. Then COIT had to summit to FIT leaders a proposal of applying for a new domain provided by VNNIC i.e. Http://www.fithou.net.vn which is currently still in use.
In the 2005 IT Gold Cup Award held by Vietnam Information Technology Association, FITHOU CYBERSCHOOL had an honor to receive a bronze cup for its achievements.
At present, FITHOU – CYBERSCHOOL can maintain the regular running and reaches nearly 4000 registrations and approximately 400,000 accesses. The number of accesses is normally 50 or 60 within a day and can be more than 300 at the same time during the examination season. FITHOU – CYBERSCHOOL has become familiar and essential to most of the lecturers and students of FIT. The individual students of remote areas like Quang Binh, Da Nang can still follow the activities on every year FIT’s birthday of 15 March. They said that a day without accessing the website to contact with their lecturers and friends made them feel uncomfortable. It must be emphasized that the website’s volunteer admin and moderators’ continuous effort over the past five years has helped FITHOU – CYBERSCHOOL work without any big problems and harassment.
At the beginning of 2006 FITHOU – CYBERSCHOOL was considered one of the two topics in the recapitulative report on FIT’s scientific research which was highly estimated by Ministry of Education and Training.
Today COIT is endeavoring in researching and improving technological aspects so that after the past five years and in 2007 a reproduction of the website can be achieved with more advanced applications to meet the nation’s increasing need for highly qualified labor resources in this integration time.
Best wishes for a FITHOU –CYBERSCHOOL of non-stop development, quality improvement and truly being another university for all of the students, graduates, lecturers and officers of FITHOU.
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posted by Huudung[2/23/2007]
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