A 3-day workshop series of Dr. Marshall G.Jones (Winthrop University) on “Technology for Teaching and Learning: Tools and Strategies for Teachers of English as a Second Language” was successfully held in three pretigious universities in Hanoi from September 26 to 28 , 2022 with the attendance of over 100 university lecturers and teachers. This workshop series was hosted by VietTESOL Association and sponsored by The Regional English Language Office (RELO Vietnam).
To be more specific, the first workshop at Phenikaa University discussed the topic “Effective Online Learning”. Dr. Marshall G.Jones showed the participants how “hybrid” learning could support face-to-face classes and how we could use online learning for the professional development of teachers and the enrichment of our students. Furthermore, the participants were instructed to use the tools of synchronous and asynchronous Learning Management Systems to help create better learning experiences for learners.
The second workshop took place in a very exciting atmosphere at the National Economics University with the topic "Creating Open Educational Resources (OER)". All workshop participants gained valuable hands-on experience when working under the direction of Dr. Jones to create at least one OER that they could use in their classroom or school. At the end of the workshop, the participants actively joined the Q&A session with Dr. Jones and contributed many practical ideas.
The 3-day workshop series ended with a seminar titled “Open Educational Resources for Teaching English as a Second Language” at School of Foreign Languages & Tourism of Hanoi University of Industry where some of the most common and useful repositories of OERs (including free online, books, videos, audio files, lesson materials, and even complete curricula on http://canva.com, https://www.pexels.com, https://openstax.org/ , https://pressbooks.com/) were presented by Dr. Jones. The participants also learned how to locate and use an OER license and common online platforms for distributing text, audio, video, and images.
At the end of the workshop series, the representatives of three universities, namely Phenikaa University, National Economics University, and School of Foreign Languages & Tourism - Hanoi University of Industry expressed their sincere thanks to Dr. Marshall G. Jones, the Regional English Office RELO Vietnam and VietTESOL association for successfully organizing a workshop series on "Technology in Teaching & Learning''. The university representatives believe that the participants have gained a lot of useful knowledge when accessing various tools during this interactive workshop, which could be used to enhance the learning experience in fully online and hybrid learning environments in their organizations./.
