Nguyễn Tấn Đại

My publications

Nguyễn Tấn Đại — 2019-08-03T17:04:46Z

List of my scientific publications in educational studies

Tang Ba Hoang, Nguyen Tan Dai, Nguyen Huu Binh, Ngo Ba Hung, Vo Viet Minh Nhat, Nguyen Thi Anh Dao, Dinh Thi Hai, & Vu Tien Dat. (2025). Benchmarking online training in higher education: Insights from vietnamese students' perceptions. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology (CJLT), 51(1). https://cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/28901
Nguyen Tan Dai. (2024). Conversion of workload in online learning: Case study of a course in the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City. Review of Social Sciences Ho Chi Minh City, 311(5), 35-56. [Fulltext in Vietnamese, with translations in English and French]
Nguyen Tan Dai. (2023). Foreign languages teaching and learning in digital era: Opportunities and challenges. Paper presented at the Conference on Using ICT in Foreign Langagues Teaching and Learning: Empirical Experiences, Challenges and Solutions, Can Tho University, March 2023. [Fulltext in Vietnamese]
Nguyen Tan Dai, & Ngo Thi Thu Trang. (2022). Studying online teaching by videoconference with the theory of transactional distance: Preliminary results from a Vietnamese university. Review of Social Sciences Ho Chi Minh City, 292(12), 47–65. [Fulltext in Vietnamese, with executive summaries in English and French]
Nguyen Tan Dai, & Nguyen Thi Hao. (2021). Proposing a digital competence framework for teachers at the Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City. Science and Technology Development Journal - Social Sciences & Humanities, 5(4), 1385-1396. https://doi.org/10.32508/stdjssh.v5i4.653 [Fulltext in Vietnamese, with translations in English and French]
Nguyen Tan Dai, & Marquet P. (2020). Compétences numériques des étudiants en réponse aux besoins sociétaux: Étude d'un modèle d'application préliminaire au Vietnam. Revue des sciences sociales de Ho Chi Minh-Ville, 1(1), 67-80.
Nguyen Tan Dai. (2020). Online learning assurance quality: Proposal for a new approach in Vietnam. Paper presented at the Conference on Quality Improvement in Higher Education Governance, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh-City, October 2020. [Fulltext in Vietnamese]
Nguyen Tan Dai. (2020). Online learning and teaching: Some fundamental principles and evaluation methodes. Paper presented at the Conference on Effective Methodes of Online Teaching, Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh-City, October 2020. [Fulltext in Vietnamese]
Nguyen Tan Dai, & Marquet P. (2019). The digital capability of students for social needs: Research on a preliminary applied model in Vietnam. Review of Social Sciences Ho Chi Minh City, 249(5), 24-38. [Fulltext in Vietnamese]
Nguyen Tan Dai, & Marquet, P. (2018). Digital literacy in response to the needs of the society: International models and pratical approaches in Vietnam. Review of Social Sciences Ho Chi Minh City, 244(12), 23-39. [Fulltext in Vietnamese]
Nguyen Tan Dai. (2018). Doctoral education in Vietnam: Regard from real data. Presented at the Conference “Solutions to improve the quality of doctoral training approach to international level”, January 22nd, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology. [Fulltext in Vietnamese]
Nguyên Tân Dai, & Marquet, P. (2017). Mesure de l'influence des TIC sur la perception de la qualité des enseignements au Vietnam : le cas des formations universitaires évaluées par l'ASEAN University Network. Cahiers de la Société française des sciences de l'information et de la communication, N° 13, p. 319-335.
Nguyên Tân Dai, & Marquet, P. (2014). Écart entre l'autoévaluation et l'évaluation externe de l'Association des universités des pays d'Asie du Sud-Est (AUN) : le cas des critères liés aux TIC dans les programmes vietnamiens. In T. Karsenti, et al., La Francophonie universitaire en question (p. 141‑157). Montréal, Canada: RIFEFF.
Nguyên Tân Dai. (2012). Kiêm, T., Science de gestion de l'éducation: Quelques problématiques théoriques et pratiques. Questions Vives, 7(17), 179‑181.
Nguyên Tân Dai, & Vu Thi Phuong Anh. (2011). University rankings and educational quality. In: Center for Educational Testing and Quality Assessment, University Rankings, Educational Quality and International Integration (pp. 105-119). [Fulltext in Vietnamese]

This list is also available at:

Update: November 2025

What I do?

Nguyễn Tấn Đại — 2019-08-03T16:47:13Z

Service offers for consultation, expertising and/or training, or all kinds of collaboration, on using of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education generally, in higher education particularly, and in scientific research. For further discussion or exchange, please contact me.

SYNTHESIS OF EXPERIENCES

* Academic qualification: Doctor in Educational Sciences, Universite of Strasbourg. Thesis title: “The ICT supporting the training quality: case study of the Vietnamese programmes assessed by the ASEAN University Network” <<http:/www.theses.fr/2017STRAG004>'>http://www.theses.fr/2017STRAG004>. [Fulltext in French]

* Certification : Project Management Professional (PMP^®) of the Project Management Institute, granted on November 21^th, 2025 (certification number: 4236696).

* Experiences: More than 20 years of works, especially specialized in the using of ICT to support the quality of teaching, training, research and university governance.

Teaching: Experiences acquired in teaching at the secondary and tertiary levels (Ho Chi Minh University of Technology, Van Lang University, Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities).
Research: Associated researcher of the Learning Sciences and Communication Laboratory (LISEC [UR-2310] – University of Strasbourg...) Collaborator in research projects conducted by national or international entities (Center for Educational Testing and Quality Assessment – Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City, Rés@TICE, LISEC…)
- Fields of interest: educational quality; education reforms; using of ICT in education; research management; scientific communication.
Innovation projects: Coordination or expertise of lots of innovation projects in governance and training in many Vietnamese higher education institutions: Hanoi University; Danang University; Can Tho University; Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology; University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City ; Ho Chi Minh City of Education; Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City…
- Principal author of the project “Accelerating the development of the digital ecosystem in Vietnamese higher education” (ACCEES), selected in the 2024 Erasmus+ Programme (score of 87/100) with a total grant of €1,000,000 over 4 years (2025-2028). [ERASMUS-EDU-2024-CBHE-101179860]
Training: Organization, coordination, assistant trainer or principal trainer of over 70 training workshops on using of ICT in teaching and research for more than one thousand faculties and staffs from several dozens of higher education institutions in many countries: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, China, Mongolia, Vanuatu, Mauritius...
Evaluation: Participation in the evaluation of articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and of projects (research, innovation, cooperation) at national or international level.
- [2018-2019] National external evaluator of the Erasmus+ project “Bachelor's and Professional Master's Degree for development, administration, management, protection of computer systems and networks in enterprises in Moldova, Kazakhstan and Vietnam”. [573901-EPP-1-2016-1-IT-EPPKAZ-CBHE-JP]

RESEARCH AND EXPERTISE FIELDS

Quality of general education, higher education and university rankings
Integration of ICT in teaching and training
Design, development and utilization of interactive pedagogical activities and online courses
Searching, assessing and using of scientific and technical information
Methods and tools for scientific references management
Scientific writing, publication, communication and bibliometrics
Electronic documents management and archiving
Methods and tools for mind mapping design

OTHER INFORMATIONS

* Languages:

Vietnamese: mother tongue;
English: professional proficiency;
French: full proficiency.

* Computers skills: good knowledge of Windows, willingness with Linux and Open-source softwares

Office: very good knowledge of OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice.org, Microsoft Office...;
Graphics: practice of image processing (Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.net...) and vector designing (Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, FreeCAD, Visio...); good knowledge of free mind mapping tools (FreePlane, CmapTools, XMind, VUE, EDraw...);
Audiovisual: practice of audiovisual processing tools (Audacity, Final Cut Pro, VSDC Free Video Editor, OBS, Filmora, DaVinci Resolve...);
Web: experiences acquired as webmaster and administrator of Internet forums (phpBB, vBulletin), Web portals and CMS (Joomla, SPIP, WordPress, Drupal) and learning content management systems (Moodle, Claroline, Canvas, Open edX...);
Educational & scientific applications: very good knowledge of educational and quiz designing tools (HotPotatoes, Xerte Toolkits, Scenari Chain & Opale, eXeLearning, Open eLearning, Lumi....) and bibliographic management (Zotero, Mendeley, ZabRef, Docear…); practice of quantitative analysis tools (R, SAS, SPSS...);
Project management applications: practice of open project management softwares (GanttProject, OpenWorkbench, ProjectLibre, Logframer).

* Hobbies & Interests: sport (football, badminton, chess), photography and literature (with the publication, among others, of the translation in Vietnamese of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novella “The Little Prince”, by the Vietnamese Writers' Association Publishing House in 2005, then republished with corrections in reinforcement by the Vietnamese Women's Publishing House in 2021 and 2022. This translation, among several others, was selected in 2020 for the textbook Literature 6^th of the Vietnamese Education Publishing House (2021) and Literature 8^th of the University of Education Publishing House (2023).

>> For contacting me >>

Short CV in attached file. Update: 23 November 2025

Where I come from?

Nguyễn Tấn Đại — 2019-08-03T13:28:55Z

I come from a mountain region, in the small valley of Dran which was, anecdotally, called “the Clouds Valley” by the doctor Alexandre Yersin on his way of discovering the Lang Bian highland more than one hundred years ago. Inspired by the dreams to fly over the hills and mountains surrounding my small town, after my high school studies at the age of 18, I went to Saigon (administratively called “Ho Chi Minh City”), the economic centre of the country, for beginning my higher education pathway. Since then, despite of my name which means “the original men who advances by great steps”, my study and professional way is not a big and long road straight forward. Anyway, it seems not to be a problem with me, because one of my favourite quotes is from “The Little Prince” of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far”.

I intended to be biologist and teacher. I did not know any French words at the beginning of my university studies. More than 20 years later, I'm neither biologist nor teacher in a narrow sense. Holding a bachelor's degree at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Education (with a mixt cursus in biology at the University of Sciences, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City), as well as a specialized post-graduate degree (DESS in French) in scientific teaching in French foreign language at the University of Le Mans and a professional master degree in using of ICT in teaching and training (Master UTICEF) at the University of Strasbourg, I finally finished a doctoral thesis in education sciences at this last university. I'm henceforth an independent researcher and consultant on education in Vietnam, especially in the fields of educational technologies and in relation with the educational quality questions, but also interested in connected subjects such as scientific and technical information, research management and scientific communication.

Who I am?

Nguyễn Tấn Đại — 2019-08-03T05:25:05Z

My name is Nguyen Tan Dai.

My family name is Nguyen (more exactly “Nguyễn” in full Vietnamese, or 阮 in ideogram).

And my first name is “Tan Dai” (or rather “Tấn Đại” and 晉大), but in fact, it is not a real “first name”. Why it seems to be so complicated?

Mục lục

Structure and abbreviation of Vietnamese names

Indeed, this is a very particular trait of the Vietnameses' identity, where the full name is always written in only one left-to-right order: “family name” (họ) + “intermediate name(s)” (tên đệm) + “principal name” (tên chính). Be attention: the “intermediate names” can't be withdrawn from the full name such the “middle names” are in English or American people. And a Vietnamese person is identified by the last element(s) of her or his full name from right-to-left.

Such in my case, with a full name “Nguyen Tan Dai” people call me “Mr. Dai”, or “Mr. Tan Dai” to distinguish with another person “Nguyen Van Dai” for example, but almost never “Mr. Nguyen”. When we want to make abbreviation, in order of priority “N. T. Dai” then “N. Tan Dai” can be used, instead of the inversed order “Nguyen T. D.” or “Nguyen Tan D.”

This particular principle of Vietnamese identity is applied in all the contexts, including formal situations (with only some exceptions for ancient heroes or historical personalities). Thus, a former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung is called “Mr. the Prime Minister Dung” rather than “Mr. the Prime Minister Nguyen”), and his short name should be “N. T. Dung”. Similarly, his successor Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phuc will be called “Mr. the Prime Minister Phuc » instead of “Mr. Prime Minister Nguyen” (otherwise people could be confused between these two personalities).

Why are there too much Nguyen?

The explication for this phenomenon is a little bit simple: for historical reasons, the Vietnamese people has only some hundreds of family names for a whole population of more than 95 million citizens. The French researcher Pierre Gourou seems to be the first Occidental scientific who is interested by the Vietnamese name's study. By a publication in 1932, he states an account of 202 family names, based on a census of 270,000 persons in the Tonkin Delta, with 37% of “Nguyên”. Further studies then give a little greater number of family names, especially by taking in account the ethnic minorities' ones, but do not yet reach a consensus for an officially recognized number (more than 300 in general).

In a most recent publication of Le Trung Hoa [1], we can see that the most commonly used family names in Vietnam actually are: “Nguyen” (38,4%), “Tran” (11%) and “Le” (9,5%). That means if you randomly meet 10 Vietnameses, you will have a chance to meet 4 “Nguyen”, 1 “Tran” and 1 “Le”. According to this author, the main reason of this “dominance” of the “Nguyen” is the fact that as long as the historic dynasties' switching, in the feudal era, the members of the predecessor loyal family have to change their family name to avoid the hunt or all forms of threats from the successor one. Firstly, by the “Ly” forced to adopt the “Nguyen” family name in the 13^rd century, then the “Ho” in the 15^th century, and the “Mac” in the 16^th century, etc. And so on, up to the last feudal dynasty in Vietnam, the “Nguyen” in the 19^th-20^th centuries, when another kind of family name adoption is commonly applied: give the current royal family name as rewards to the talents or merited people…

Therefore, there are now in Vietnam about 36-37 million “Nguyen”, 10-11 million “Tran”, 9-10 million “Le”, and these three dominant family names cover around 60% of the country's population. The next 30% are divided for a dozen of others common family names and the last 10% for almost 300 less frequently used family names. Consequently, Vietnamese people use a lot of the “principal names” or combine them with “intermediate names” to fill the lack of family names' diversity. Only as the exchange with the international communities, they have to simplify the administrative procedures by accepting to call “first name” their “principal name” even if this one does not never stand before the “family name” in their own culture.

Briefly, in Vietnamese manner I am “Nguyễn Tấn Đại”, which is阮晉大 in ideogram or “written Chinese”, with less accentuated letters in French “Nguyên Tân Dai”, or more simplified in English writing way “Nguyen Tan Dai”. And very shortly, please call me “Mr. Dai”.

[1] Lê Trung Hoa. Nhân danh học Việt Nam [Vietnamese name's study]. TP. HCM [Ho Chi Minh City] : Trẻ [Youth's Publishing House], 2013. 163 p. ISBN : 978-604-1-02104-4.