The Ministry of Education and Training will pilot the creation of electronic transcripts for use nationwide.

Piloting the use of electronic transcripts

Dr. Nguyen Son Hai, Director of the Department of Information Technology (Ministry of Education and Training), said that the Ministry has issued a circular encouraging schools to use electronic transcripts and electronic grade books. Schools and localities have also started to implement it, and some places have even implemented it throughout the entire province.

However, the implementation encountered many difficulties, and schools in different provinces were not consistent.

“Therefore, the leaders of the Ministry of Education and Training have directed departments and bureaus to pilot this implementation. The model will be implemented nationwide and then the results of the model will be accurately evaluated and there will be guidelines and institutions for implementation. Currently, the departments and bureaus of the Ministry are in the process of implementation,” said Mr. Hai.

Mr. Hai said that electronic transcripts are an electronic form of transcripts, with authenticated signatures of authorized individuals and organizations, have legal value and can be used like paper transcripts and used in the digital environment.

According to Mr. Hai, if electronic transcripts can be created, it will bring great benefits to society, schools, teachers, students, etc.

Mr. Hai cited the convenience in storing, managing and using student records in schools. “Currently, our student records are made of paper and can be crumpled, and if left for a long time, they can be eaten by termites or even damaged. But electronic student records are very good at storing.”

The second is to reduce the pressure on records and books for teachers and schools.

“We will also study to restructure the electronic transcript process to ensure it meets the requirements but is simple. For example, currently, for secondary school transcripts, subject teachers must sign. We will also study this in the future to see if it is necessary for subject teachers to sign the transcript, or if it is enough for the school principal to sign,” said Mr. Hai.

Third, make transparent the process of managing learning and training results and especially limit shortcomings in correcting students' learning results.

“The electronic transcript solution will minimize that. When we are transparent, it will be very difficult to correct, thereby limiting the negative impacts we are currently facing when using paper transcripts.”

However, Mr. Hai said, the Ministry of Education and Training also identified digital transformation in core education, the most important is still in teaching - learning, testing and evaluation.

According to Mr. Hai, the current assessment and testing is still mainly done by teachers: creating questions, organizing exams, marking papers, assigning scores... "A huge amount of work, especially for teachers who teach many classes".

Therefore, the digital transformation orientation in testing and assessment that the Ministry of Education and Training is aiming for is to increase online assessment (for regular tests) and increase computer-based testing (for periodic tests).

“From now on, general education will have to be determined and resolute in doing this. If periodic exams can be done on computers, the benefits will be huge. Firstly, it is public and transparent when the quality of the exam questions is the same, the grading is done by machines and there is no human impact. This will improve the quality of the assessment. Secondly, it will greatly reduce the pressure and work for teachers when doing this. The scores after students finish the exam can also be automatically updated to the management software,” Mr. Hai emphasized.

Building a pilot project for a digital university education model

To promote digital transformation in university training, according to Mr. Hai, the Ministry of Education and Training is working with universities to build an open online training platform for shared use by universities (MOET-MOOC).

“It is a common system and students of all schools will share learning materials and courses on it. In the immediate future, there will be 7 main training groups whose courses will be digitized and will be led by 7 training institutions, in coordination with related schools to participate in building and using the system together.

That means schools will join together to build courses and put them on this platform. Through that, training institutions can unify and recognize each other's credits of online courses on the system. Thus, in the future, students of one school can take courses from another school if their credits are recognized by their school.

Currently, the Ministry of Education and Training is developing and preparing to submit to the Prime Minister for approval a pilot project for this digital university education model./.