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Delegates from Liverpool John Moores University and Phu Xuan University talking about the digital transformation project at a conference.

Co-designing global approaches to digital transformation

An ALT-Jisc award-winning project from Liverpool John Moores University and Phu Xuan University in Vietnam has fostered new digital approaches and strengthened bonds across different continents.

How can educators and technologists from different global regions learn from each other and enhance their digital education offer? In answering that question, the Đigi:Đổi Consortium has shown us what’s possible.

Supported by Jisc, this partnership between eight UK and Vietnamese Higher Education (HE) providers, delivered under the British Council’s Going Global Partnership programme, was given the UK’s prestigious Association of Learning Technology (ALT) - Jisc award for digital transformation in September 2024. It involved more than 500 staff and 3,000 students.

Leading the project was Liverpool John Moores University, whose prior experience in numerous collaborative online international learning (COIL) projects, as well as the emphasis placed by their teaching and learning strategy on digital education, strengthened their proposal.

UK lead Professor Tony Wall told us that Jisc’s digital transformation framework gave the ideal starting point from which to explore the contextual differences between digital approaches in British and Vietnamese HE. He said:

"Jisc frameworks and guidance were a key element of crafting the proposal in the first place and influencing our thinking."

The team understood from the outset that the diversity of Vietnam’s HE institutions would require an inclusive, non-prescriptive approach. Each institution involved would explore digital transformation on their own terms, with requirements and goals relevant to their current situation, rather than implementing a common set of measures.

Dr Tien Ho, the project’s Vietnamese lead and vice chairwoman of Phu Xuan University Council, said:

"There’s such a diversity of HE institutions in Vietnam. There are small universities with a few hundred students on top of a mountain, with limited data, networks and transport. But there’s also state-of-the-art science institutions with more than 50,000 students, right in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City.

"As you can imagine, practitioners in these different settings also have very different roles, responsibilities and constraints.

"In the initial workshops, everyone was exposed to the same ideas and concepts. Later on, we moved from national level approaches to localised mentoring groups. This helped us manage the differences more effectively, and helped create a legacy of ongoing sustainable networks."

Guiding reflections with the digital transformation framework

These networks proved beneficial for a variety of reasons – some of which were unrelated to the aims of the project. In less accessible mountainous regions, the networks have fed into other local projects (including a project to support people with disabilities in these areas), helping drive community action and advocate for infrastructure improvements.

For each institution, participants were divided into two main groups – a leadership team and a teaching team.

The leaders’ training sessions were geared around broad reflections on all aspects of the digital transformation framework. Leaders were encouraged to emphasise or de-emphasise aspects according to the needs and priorities of their own institutions. The project team used insights from nationwide surveys, conducted with translated versions of the Jisc digital insights surveys, to provide additional perspectives and supporting data, guiding the reflective process.

The teaching team training focused in more detail on the needs and experiences of classroom practitioners. Again, survey data played an important part in helping practitioners reflect. For example, when designing digital classroom experiences, some practitioners had to accommodate local conditions such as the lack of access to mobile wifi for 80% of students in the classroom.

The training for both groups was deliberately designed not to differentiate between ‘advanced’ or ‘beginner’ users of technology. Tony said:

"We want people to share whatever learning they have. It’s not about one being more experienced than the other."

This ‘jagged edge’ frontier to digital learning is common across many learning environments, with advanced users of AI and other emerging technologies often defined by curiosity, rather than a specific IT-based job role.

This was made apparent on the project, Tien tells us, by the students themselves. Tien said:

"One ingenious group of students, with the support of their tutor, were already developing AI tools using open-source tech to help other students plan their study time, or automate their own micro-enterprise manufacturing processes."

Laying the digital foundations

The Đigi:Đổi Consortium’s ALT - Jisc award for digital transformation represents recognition of both the project’s success, and of the significance of their work for the region.

Institutions across Vietnam have now begun to implement fundamental changes in their pedagogical approach – moving from ‘sage on stage’ top-down learning to student-managed group activities where artificial intelligence is integrated as a ‘third voice’.

The project has also inspired many changes in institutional processes, such as shared-service teaching and research workload systems that empower staff with the tools to manage their time more effectively.

The influence of the project has now spread far beyond the participating institutions, leading to events such as the Vietnam-Asia DX Summit 2025 in May. Planning for further projects at a national policy level in neighbouring ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) countries is now underway.

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