Pandemic, social distancing, and social work education: students’ satisfaction with online education in Vietnam

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has tremendously impacted different aspects of public health and social life across countries. In Vietnam, state-wide social distancing mandate has shifted the traditional face-to-face learning to online learning for at least two months, which created significant challenges for both social work educators and students, given the fact that most social work courses require the practice and direct interaction components, and many students have limited access to technology resources. This study aims to assess the level of immediate satisfaction of Vietnamese social work students with online courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 186 undergraduate-level social work students in a national univeristy in Vietnam completed an online survey on Qualtrics. The results show that students faced multiple problems with their participation in online courses due to the Internet access quality, such as disrupted connection and low-quality sound. Although being unfamiliar with online learning, most students reported no major difficulty, and having support available for their online learning. Students’ level of satisfaction with face-to-face teaching was significantly higher than that of online teaching on all criteria. A long-term strategy is needed to improve interactive activities and practices when teaching social work online.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• online learning
• social work education
• Vietnam

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linh P. Dinh

Linh Dinh gained her BA degree in Sociology with top 1 score from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University (USSH, VNU) in 2011. After that, in 2012, she went to England and studied her Master of Science degree in Health and Social care at the University of Huddersfield. After graduating with merit, she got back to Vietnam and started working as a lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology, USSH, VNU since 2013. She gained her PhD degree in sociology in 2018 with the thesis titled “Health dimensions of marital violence” and was rewarded Certificate of Merit by the USSH’s rector for excellent result of this thesis. Her research interests include social security, health and gender studies. She has substantial experiences with research design as well as data collection and analysis.

Trang T. Nguyen

Trang Nguyen, PhD, MSW, is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Studies of Displaced Populations, Department of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She completed her doctoral training in social work at University of South Carolina. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in social work at Vietnam National University, where she then worked as a social work instructor. Her research interests include mental health problems, such as depression and dementia, as well as resilience and coping among older adults and their family caregivers. She is also interested in culturally competent, community-based, and art-based interventions for these groups. She has worked on several research projects on mental health problems and sociopsychological treatments for adults with mental disorders in Vietnam, as well as situations of and interventions for dementia family caregivers in Vietnam and United States.