Abstract:

For long time, the instructional paradigm has applied in Vietnamese Higher Education in which lecturers say, students listen and submissively carry out lecturers’ directions. However, in the age of technology, our students change radically. They can be called as the term “Digital Natives” that Marc Prensky (2001:1-2) coined and “our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computer, video game and the internet.
Students in the world as well as in Vietnam now bring with them a technological competence not seen in previous generations. They expect learning activities are more open, flexible. They are also interested in connecting with the whole large world with a computer from the conner of their room through social networking like YouTube, Facebook, and Flickr. The language of instruction now makes the traditional inquiry obsolete.
However, lecturers, especially the older, were trained in another way without the implication of today’s technology. They teach as they were taught and even resist changing their pedagogy or only grudgingly increase their technological competence. In addition, Vietnam, as many other Asian countries where education systems are permitted in Confusion culture zone, where lecturers are considered role models and they are comfortable with their situation. As the result, lecturers, the “Digital Immigrants”, are struggling to teach a generation with entirely new language. Unfortunately, the newest generation of students will not go backwards and lecturers cannot just grouse about how good things used to be but rather than reconsider methodology. Lecturers need to be persuaded to change so that they, the “digital immigrants” can catch up with “digital natives”. But how can we make these changes happen?
Discussion in this paper bases partly on the survey with 240 academic staff from six universities and colleges in the North, the Middle and the South of Vietnam. The survey explores how academic staff thinks about information technology-based teaching activities.
There is a Chinese proverb saying that “When the winds of change blow, some built walls while others build windmills”. When the winds of information technology blow, it seems that academic staff should build windmills rather than walls.

Keywords:

Higher Education.