Science Communication and STEM Workshop in Hanoi

Over 130 university educators, teachers from high school and private educational organisations representing more than 30 institutions from various parts of Vietnam attended the Science Communication & STEM Workshop held at the Vietnam National University-University of Science (VNU-HUS) campus on 7 to 9 November. This joint workshop organised by the Faculty of Science with VNU-HUS is part of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) for University Educators in ASEAN Programme, a project made possible by a grant from Temasek Foundation.

This was the first time the Faculty has partnered with an ASEAN university to deliver workshops on science communication and STEM education. The event saw plenary speakers and workshop facilitators from NUS and VNU share on the developments of STEM education, strategies adopted by various institutions to raise interest in STEM as well as practical classroom pedagogy.

Prof NGUYEN Tien Giang, Vice Rector of VNU-HUS opened the event and spoke of the pressing need to raise the quality of STEM education in Vietnam as a key to economic development. 

Prof Leo TAN, Director of Special Projects in the Faculty, painted an informative picture of the development of STEM education and the driving factors that shaped its design from Singapore’s independence to date.

Other plenary speakers were Prof TA Thi Thao, Head of Chemistry Department in VNU-HUS, and Prof Phil CHAN from Physics Department. Of particular interest is the talk given by Dr DANG Van Son, from the Centre of Nano & Energy, VNU-HUS and Mr HOANG Van Dong from STEM Alliance Vietnam on efforts made to promote STEM education to rural communities in Vietnam.  Participants also attended workshops led by lauded NUS and VNU-HUS educators.

In a closing segment, participants engaged in an open dialogue on pedagogy and practice with workshop facilitators who were inundated with many questions.

These ranged from the practical like how to make a lesson plan for interdisciplinary teaching, how to develop science demonstration equipment to more philosophical issues like what skills teachers need to be effective as educators of STEM.

Dr TA Hong Duc from the Hanoi University of Science and Technology found the workshop extremely timely and useful. “Attending Prof SOW Chorng Haur’s workshop showed me how creative, fun and exciting his lessons are and this has given me many ideas that I can use to better engage my students.”