ICDL VietNam
The world is digitalized. In recent years, the global trend is to develop a digital competence framework to assess citizens' technology skills, improve citizen’s digital competence and assist policymakers formulate policies that support digital competence building in target groups. The digital competence framework can be referred as common language to identify and describe the key areas of digital compentence across countries. The European Commission has developed the DigComp Digital Competence Framework for Citizens and UNESCO has developed the Digital Literacy Global Framework (DLGF) as a digital competence assessment for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This framework is also extended to assess digital competencies for specific target groups such as Digital Competence Framework for Consumers (DigCompConsumers), Entrepreneurship Competence Framework (EntreComp), Digital Competence Framework for Educational Organisations (DigCompOrg), Digital Competence Framework for Educators (DigCompEdu).
Being a leading international organization in the field of Information Technology (IT) testing and skills assessment, ICDL has participated in developing, contributing and sharing experiences during the development of the DigComp as well as playing a leading role in formulating the e-Competence Framework for ICT Users. ICDL's correlation to the development of DigComp was verified by an independent study conducted by UNESCO. In identifying local, national and international competence frameworks, the study highlighted that ICDL is an example of a digital competence framework in several countries. About 177 learning outcomes from ICDL modules mapped to the DigComp competence framework and that ICDL covered DigComp more comprehensively than 8 other digital competence frameworks. Another UNICEF report showed that ICDL modules have been used as digital competencies in 31 countries and territories.
The results from developing a national competence framework like DigComp can bring some positive impacts: (i) the competences recognized by this framework can be widely applied across countries; (ii) the skills certified by this framework help employers and employees better understand the requirements of the job and the candidate's competencies; (iii) educators have a solid basis for developing competence assessment courses and exams; (iv) the Government shall have a statistical basis for the country's digital capacity to make appropriate policies to develop digital skills and digital transformation to keep pace with other countries.
In the field of education and training, it is necessary to develop a digital competence framework targeting to students, as a premise for developing programs and teaching materials to objectively assess students' digital skills and an accurate measure of the level of digital transformation in the field of education. This digital competence framework for students must be part of the digital competence framework for citizens in general, but it still needs to have its own characteristics, such as: "inheriting and developing the advantages of the current IT program", "selectively exploiting international digital competence frameworks", "ensuring international integration, mutual recognition between countries in the region and the world"... At the moment, a group of researchers from the Vietnam National Institute of Educational Sciences – Ministry of Education and Training is developing a digital competence framework for Vietnamese students with the desire to contribute to the process of enhancing and assessing digital capacity of Vietnamese students.
With the experience of developing and sharing practical experiences in assessing digital skills for more than 17 million candidates through more than 80 million tests taken worldwide, we wish to contribute our experience to the digital transformation process of HCMC city through the project " Improving the competence, knowledge and skills of informatics application for high school students in Ho Chi Minh City, following international standards in the period of 2021 – 2030" approved by the HCMC People's Committee on March 8, 2021.
During this project, ICDL has delivered ICDL Digital Student programme for k-12 students, starting at grade 3. The training curriculum has adapted the national standard as regulated in Circular 32/2018/TT-BGDĐT of MOET and approached to European Digital Competence framework DigComp. Subjects under the Digital Student program include:
Elementary Level:
- First Steps
- Application Basics
- Online Basics
Secondary level:
- Computer Essentials
- Online Essentials
- Documents
- Presentations
- Spreadsheets
High school level - advanced applied informatics
- Documents (Advanced)
- Presentations (Advanced)
- Management Spreadsheets
High school level - Computer Science
- Cyber Security
- Online Collaboration
- Computing
- Using Databases
Example: At secondary level, students have access to 5 international modules including: Grade 6: Computer Essentials and Online Essentials module. These two modules teach students the necessary concepts and skills related to Information and Communication Technology as well as the knowledge and skills needed when using the Internet. Referencing the European competence assessment framework, these two contents meet 5/5 of the domains, including (i) proficiency in information and data; (ii) communication and collaboration; (iii) digital content creation; (iv) safety and (v) problem-solving ability.
Similarly, in grade 7 and grade 8, students have access to content such as Documents, Presentation, Spreadsheets, meeting 2/5 of the domains of the European digital competence framework: (i) digital content creation; and (ii) problem-solving abilities.
For other levels of study, please see the brief mapping table below for more information on the responsiveness of the ICDL programme to the DigComp European Digital Competence Framework.
With more than 20 years of experience in delivering the ICT training and certification programs around the world, ICT experts of ICDL have developed an international IT program for students, focusing on 3 knowledge pillars: Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Computer Science, Digital Literacy. These are also the 3 knowledge pillars as in the general education program regulated in Circular 32/2018 /TT-BGDDT.
The program has been developed by leading experts of the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) and has been widely implemented in many countries around the world, with 6 components that make up the ecosystem of the program, including:
(1) Syllabus
(2) Books
(3) E-learning
(4) & (5) Electronic lesson plans and presentations, support for teachers in preparing lessons
(6) Globally recognized ICDL certification test
Thus, with the implementation of the ICDL Digital Student program under the Master Plan "Improving the competence, knowledge and skills of informatics application for high school students in Ho Chi Minh City, following international standards in the period of 2021 – 2030", students participating in the program will improve their competence, technical knowledge according to the objectives of the Master Plan, while adapting to international competence standard. ICDL would like to accompany the HCMC Department of Education and Training in this strategic mission, contributing to the goal of digital transformation in the education sector at city level and national level.
Above are our suggested solutions for the successful delivery of the Master Plan "Improving the competence, knowledge and skills of informatics application for high school students in Ho Chi Minh City, following international standards in the period of 2021 – 2030".