International Virtual Conference 2021: Technologies & Language Education

With the aim of exchanging teaching experience and methodology as well as research in Applied Linguistics, School of Foreign Languages - University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) collaborated with Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), and Humber College (Canada) on organizing a virtual conference under the theme of “Technology and Language Education” on November 15^th, 2021. In terms of the context of online learning popularity and international education tendency, particularly in Covid-19 pandemic situation, a conference with the participation of well-known education-specializing keynote speakers from Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) and Humber College (Canada) has engaged the attendance by presenters, scholars and lecturers worldwide.

The organizer connected to Cisco Webex platform allowing an audience capacity of up to 1000.

The conference not only called for a variety of highly-qualified papers and presenting topics from UEH but also attracted the contributions of lecturers from national and international universities: Banking University Ho Chi Minh City, Bangladesh University, Humber College (Canada), Northwestern Polytechnical University (China), Jagannath University (Bangladesh) and so on.In addition, the conference assembled various lecturers and researchers from educational Institutions: University of Economics and Law, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, International University, Ho Chi Minh City University of Education, Ho Chi Minh City University of Education and Technology, Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Hanoi University, Ton Duc Thang University, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Sardar Patel University, University of Tokyo, Mariano Marcos State University, University of Malaysia as well as a number of additional universities and education institutions.

Especially, contributing mostly to the success of the conference was the participation of 4 Keynote Speakers from internationally recognized universities: Dr. Stephen Allen (Humber College, Canada), Assoc. Prof. Louise Starkey, Assoc. Prof. Jonathan Newton, and Dr. Margaret Gleeson (Victoria University of Wellington).

In his Opening Session, Prof. Su Dinh Thanh - President of UEH - delivered a welcome speech and emphasized that the conference would bring the attended lecturers precious experiences, exchange opportunities and specialization advances. This was also a meaningful event affirmingtheir mark on 45^th anniversary of UEH.

Prof. Su Dinh Thanh - President of UEH stating the Conference Opening

The conference was divided into 2 sessions interleaving Plenary Sessions from the Keynote Speakers with Parallel Sessions from the participants. Initially, it was Dr. Stephen Allen’s Keynote Talk (Humber College, Canada) on “Avoiding technological monocultures and supporting lifelong learning literacies”.

Q&A Session after Dr. Stephen Allen’s talk

Next, Assoc. Prof. Louise Starkey from Victoria University of Wellington gave a talk on “Technology and the future of Higher Education”. This topic attracted the participants’ concerns and questions.

A lecturer at University of Economics and Law - Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, questioning directly Assoc. Prof. Louise Starkey.

Ending Plenary Session, the participants were able to select other rooms on Cisco Webex platform to be involved in their interested Parallel Sessions.

Parallel Presentations - in Morning Session with Assoc. Prof. Maria Lucia. DiPlacito’s turn from Humber College (Canada)

Parallel Presentations - in Afternoon Session with Mr. Nguyen Van Nguyen’s part - Banking University Ho Chi Minh City

Assoc. Prof. Jonathan Newton’s Keynote Talk from Victoria University of Wellington was on “Digitally mediated language teaching: Raising the bar and rethinking roles”.

Assoc .Prof. Jonathan Newton staring Afternoon Plenary Session

Following Plenary Session was an attractive topic to non-ELT teachers:“Teaching content or teaching language? The dilemma facing subject teachers” presented by Dr. Magaret Gleeson, Victoria University of Wellington. At the end of each speaker’s talk, a lot of questions were raised and discussed.

Lots of queries were sent to program chatbox

International Virtual Conference 2021 “Technologies and Language Education” received more than 90% positive feedback regarding conference experiences. This figure was a testament to the success of the conference in particular and recognition for the efforts of UEH School of Foreign Languages as well as UEH on the journey towards core knowledge values, serving forcommunity sustainable development of .

Videos and presenting files related to the conference can be found HERE.

News, Photos: School of Foreign Languages, Department of Marketing and Communication