By leading 10 faculty through a 3-week Master Teacher Trainer program, HCMUT’s Dr. Phan Thi Mai Ha and Dr. Tran Viet Hong checked off a major peer-to-peer professional development milestone. To prepare to train their colleagues in modern pedagogies, Dr. Phan and Dr. Tran worked with BUILD-IT for months to develop both face-to-face and online learning modules. Their pilot is the first locally-led Master Teacher Training in BUILD-IT’s long-term initiative to improve instructional pedagogy and teaching quality by leveraging in-country trainers and distance technologies. BUILD-IT’s Certified Facilitator and Master Teacher Training program (CFT/MTT) leverages in-country trainers and distance technologies to create sustainable long-term faculty development systems to ensure wide-scale adoption and implementation of modern methodologies.
Building on ten years of momentum supporting faculty development through previous programs like HEEAP and VULII, BUILD-IT’s Certified Facilitator and Master Teacher Training program (CFT/MTT Program) is the primary model for sustainable faculty development at our partner universities. Starting in 2017, BUILD-IT led a two-phase training-of-trainers program that trained over 220 Master teachers and 50 Certified Facilitators. The Certified Facilitators learned to lead Master Teacher Training cohorts, adopt and migrate content, and develop soft skills curriculum on to Moodle which led to them to mentor their peers to integrate academic and soft skills learning outcomes into their engineering and technology coursework.
While ASU guided the Certified Facilitator Trainings (CFTs) and Master Teacher Trainings (MTTs) to develop modules on academic skills such as active learning, communication, problem solving, and distance learning, rather than replicating ASU’s best practices, each schools’ CFs developed unique learning models to fit their students’ needs and academic context. Empowered by advanced training, proven confidence, and online learning tools, each partners’ Certified Facilitators will train countless colleagues to become master teachers.
In June, HCMUT-led training proves that as ASU transitions our models to our partners they are eager to continue to learn from their peers. The integration and expansion of in-country peer mentoring will rapidly spread the latest soft skills pedagogies.