Internationalisation of higher education curriculum : a case study in Vietnam

This thesis investigated how the process of internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC) was perceived as taking place at a non-western university, namely Foreign Trade University (FTU) in Vietnam, through the development and offering of a number of jointly run programs, labelled Foreign Undergraduate Programs (FUPs). Two specific programs were examined, both of which were developed in partnership with two western universities – Colorado State University (FTU-CSU program) and London Metropolitan University (FTU-LMET program). These programs provide a range of opportunities for Vietnamese university students to experience an education that aims to reflect an international and therefore ‘broader’ context. The relationship between globalisation and internationalisation is explored and linked with the development of curriculum in higher education and internationalisation trends and strategies. Internationalisation of the curriculum, which is one of the internationalisation strategies employed by educational institutions, is investigated in terms of its interrelationship with student learning, the disciplines and academics. Engeström’s (2001) third generation Activity Theory was used as the theoretical lens for analysis of the data, which was collected via a mainly qualitative case study. Two cohorts of participants provided data through 24 interviews (seven including a joint one with program leaders/course coordinators, and 17 with academics) and 34 surveys completed by academics. The interviews/survey investigated participants’ perceptions about internationalisation and particularly IoC in relation to the two programs. Part of the significance of this study lies in the use of a number of conceptual and theoretical frameworks to extend the current body of literature beyond the main context of western higher education. An innovation in this study was the evaluation of the level of curriculum internationalisation at FTU, which was conducted using the model of curriculum internationalisation proposed by Huang (2017). Findings suggested that program managers and course coordinators worked collaboratively with their western partners to provide programs that they perceived as worthwhile in meeting the needs of the institution and the Vietnamese government agenda for internationalisation. However, academics were not generally well informed about the broader goals relating to IoC and found it challenging to accommodate the expectations with limited resources and lack of appropriate training.Doctor of Philosoph

New Material for Si-Based Light Source Application for CMOS Technology

In this chapter, an approach to enhance the radiative recombination of the Ge film grown on the Si substrate is presented. The Ge band gap structure could be modified by applying a tensile strain and high n-doping in the Ge epilayers. It thus becomes a direct band gap material with high photoluminescence efficiency which is compatible with mainstream silicon technology. The interdiffusion effect between Ge film and Si substrate is also mentioned in this section. We proposed a new method to suppress the Si/Ge interdiffusion to reduce the effect of Si atoms on the optical property of Ge film due to Si presence

M-LEARNING APPLICATION IN TEACHING BADMINTON FOR PHYSICAL EDUCATION STUDENTS IN VIETNAM

The article evaluates the efficacy of M-learning in instructing the Badminton course for K14 university students at the University of Sports and Physical Education in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Utilizing an experimental design, it contrasts the outcomes of two groups: the K13 students who were taught through conventional face-to-face methods and the K14 students who engaged in blended learning. Both groups were exposed to identical content and assessment procedures. The findings indicate that students in the blended learning approach outperformed their peers in the traditional setting. The study also delves into resource utilization and collects feedback from learners, underscoring the advantages of M-learning in Badminton instruction.  Article visualizations

Energy-efficient resource allocation in limited fronthaul capacity cloud-radio access networks

In recent years, cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) have demonstrated their role as a formidable technology candidate to address the challenging issues from the advent of Fifth Generation (5G) mobile networks. In C-RANs, the modules which are capable of processing data and handling radio signals are physically separated in two main functional groups: the baseband unit (BBU) pool consisting of multiple BBUs on the cloud, and the radio access networks (RANs) consisting of several low-power remote radio heads (RRH) whose functionality are simplified with radio transmission/reception. Thanks to the centralized computation capability of cloud computing, C-RANs enable the coordination between RRHs to significantly improve the achievable spectral efficiency to satisfy the explosive traffic demand from users. More importantly, this enhanced performance can be attained at its power-saving mode, which results in the energy-efficient C-RAN perspective. Note that such improvement can be achieved under an ideal fronthaul condition of very high and stable capacity. However, in practice, dedicated fronthaul links must remarkably be divided to connect a large amount of RRHs to the cloud, leading to a scenario of non-ideal limited fronthaul capacity for each RRH. This imposes a certain upper-bound on each user’s spectral efficiency, which limits the promising achievement of C-RANs. To fully harness the energy-efficient C-RANs while respecting their stringent limited fronthaul capacity characteristics, a more appropriate and efficient network design is essential. The main scope of this thesis aims at optimizing the green performance of C-RANs in terms of energy-efficiency under the non-ideal fronthaul capacity condition, namely energy-efficient design in limited fronthaul capacity C-RANs. Our study, via jointly determining the transmit beamforming, RRH selection, and RRH–user association, targets the following three vital design issues: the optimal trade-off between maximizing achievable sum rate and minimizing total power consumption, the maximum energy-efficiency under adaptive rate-dependent power model, the optimal joint energy-efficient design of virtual computing along with the radio resource allocation in virtualized C-RANs. The significant contributions and novelties of this work can be elaborated in the followings. Firstly, the joint design of transmit beamforming, RRH selection, and RRH–user association to optimize the trade-off between user sum rate maximization and total power consumption minimization in the downlink transmissions of C-RANs is presented in Chapter 3. We develop one powerful with high-complexity and two novel efficient low-complexity algorithms to respectively solve for a global optimal and high-quality sub-optimal solutions. The findings in this chapter show that the proposed algorithms, besides overcoming the burden to solve difficult non-convex problems within a polynomial time, also outperform the techniques in the literature in terms of convergence and achieved network performance. Secondly, Chapter 4 proposes a novel model reflecting the dependence of consumed power on the user data rate and highlights its impact through various energy-efficiency metrics in CRANs. The dominant performance of the results form Chapter 4, compared to the conventional work without adaptive rate-dependent power model, corroborates the importance of the newly proposed model in appropriately conserving the system power to achieve the most energy efficient C-RAN performance. Finally, we propose a novel model on the cloud center which enables the virtualization and adaptive allocation of computing resources according to the data traffic demand to conserve more power in Chapter 5. A problem of jointly designing the virtual computing resource together with the beamforming, RRH selection, and RRH–user association which maximizes the virtualized C-RAN energy-efficiency is considered. To cope with the huge size of the formulated optimization problem, a novel efficient with much lower-complexity algorithm compared to previous work is developed to achieve the solution. The achieved results from different evaluations demonstrate the superiority of the proposed designs compared to the conventional work

Germanium Band Gap Engineering Induced by Tensile Strain for Si-Based Optoelectronic Applications

We have combined structural and optical characterizations to investigate the tensile-strained state and the band gap engineering of Ge layers grown on Si(001) using molecular beam epitaxy. The tensile strain is generated in the Ge layers due to a difference of thermal expansion coefficients between Ge and Si. The Ge growth on Si(001) was proceeded using a two-step growth process: a low-temperature step to produce relaxed buffer layers, followed by a high-temperature step to generate the tensile strain in the Ge layers. For the low-temperature step, we have evidenced the existence of a substrate temperature window from 260 to $300\circ$C in which the well-known Stranski-Krastanov Ge/Si growth mode transition from two-dimensional to three-dimensional growth can be completely suppressed. We show that the value of the tensile strain in the Ge layers lineally increases with increasing the growth temperature and reaches a saturation value of $\sim 0.24$% in the temperature range of $700-770\circ$C. Post-grown cyclic thermal annealing has allowed to increase the tensile strain up to 0.30%, which is the highest value ever reported to date. Finally, photoluminescence measurements reveal both an enhancement of the Ge direct band gap emission and a reduction of its energy due to the presence of tensile strain in the layers

Factors affecting intention to purchase organic agriculture products among Vietnamese

Globally, customer intention to purchase has become the essential part of the product and organization's success in the market. More recently, the idea has captured the attention of academic and policymakers alike. Therefore, the current article analyses product quality features such as agreeableness, emotional stability conscientiousness, openness to experience and extroversion on the intention to purchase organic agricultural products in the context of Vietnam. The study also analyses the mediating role of customer satisfaction between the association of product quality features and intention to purchase organic products in Vietnam. The present study uses questionnaires to collect data pertaining to the health sector of Vietnam. The current study employs the smart-PLS to analyze the constructs and items' reliability as well as the association among constructs. The results show that product quality features except extroversion have a positive and significant association with intention to purchase organic products in Vietnam. The results also reveal that customer satisfaction significantly and positively mediates among the associations of product quality features and intention to purchase organic products in Vietnam. This study is suitable for policymakers while formulating policies that may directly or indirectly affect customers' intention to purchase organic agricultural products.Luong Thu Thuy (Faculty of Economics, Academy of Finance, Vietnam), Tran Thi Phuong Diu (Faculty of Economics, Academy of Finance, Vietnam), Nguyen Dinh Hoan (Faculty of Economics, Academy of Finance, Vietnam), Vu Viet Ninh (Faculty of Economics, Academy of Finance, Vietnam), Nguyen Thi Thuy Nga (Faculty of Economics, Academy of Finance, Vietnam)Includes bibliographical reference

Two decades of studies on learning management system in higher education: A bibliometric analysis with Scopus database 2000-2020

Over the past twenty years, using learning management systems in higher education has attracted increasing interest from researchers around the globe. In this context, the current study aimed to explore the volume, growth trajectory, and geographic distribution of learning management systems in higher education literature, along with identifying impactful authors, sources, and publications, and highlight emerging research issues. The authors conducted bibliometric analysis on 1334 documents, related to the use of learning management systems in the context of higher education, extracted from Scopus database. The findings show a rapidly growing knowledge base on learning management systems in higher education, especially intensely in the years 2015-2020 and primarily from research in developed societies. This flourishing is consistent with the development trend of international education and the strong development of technology. In addition, the core literature was identified based on the volume of publications and citations. The results also reveal the emerging intellectual structure of the field and provide points of reference for scholars studying the discipline. This paper offers a knowledge map for future research assessments of learning management systems in higher education