Business courses for the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry
The VCCI approached major international academic and training institutions that offered face to face teaching. The resulting offers did not meet Vietnamese needs because they were too expensive and/or could not be scaled up to meet the huge demand. Instead the VCCI chose to work with a team comprising Lan Dang, Le Anh Vu and Ravi Corea together with other World Bank colleagues (Linh Nguyen and Eiko Wataya) to facilitate the development and delivery of Video Conference and web based training business courses for Vietnamese companies. Le, Lan and Ravi adopted an approach for meeting VCCI needs which reflects the core values that underpin Link Asea's consulting practice. These were: that every institution and participant in the training program has a role to play and brings with them essential knowledge that must be acknowledged and respected by all; that knowledge is best developed and disseminated through a process that integrates strong partnerships, transparent business processes; information and communication technology, instructional design and subject excellence that is fully understood and supported by all parties participating in the program. The resulting “blended learning” program involved web based information sharing and discussion, video conferencing, local program facilitators, written documents, a virtual knowledge library and a strong feedback loop based on hard monitoring and evaluation data. The program is a great success and has generated demand for many more courses.
Professional learning content is provided by the Australian National University with additional courses being developed in collaboration with ChuSanRen, Tokyo (http://www.chusanren.or.jp/english/b_member. html) – a Japanese industrial association. The approach has proved so successful that similar programs are being developed for Indonesia and Mongolia, to be delivered in early 2009.