VietNamNet Bridge – The 24th Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU) annual conference opened in Hanoi for the first time on October 27.

Attending the two-day event were Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Bui Van Ga, representatives of 70 distance education universities from 45 AAOU member countries and territories, international organisations in Asia and members of the AAOU across the world.

At the ceremony, Deputy PM Nguyen Thien Nhan spoke highly of the AAOU’s role in offering study opportunities for the people. He affirmed that open and distance education contributed to building a lifelong study-oriented society for everyone and had become an integral part of the national education system.

With the theme “Open distance learning towards building sustainable global learning communities”, the event will focus on ideology and philosophy, partnership and communication, methodology and technology, sustainability, access, equity and quality, opportunities and challenges.

About 200 reports discussed the building of a sustainable study community and its challenges, cooperation among colleges and universities in sharing materials and e-learning equipment, and government subsidies for distance education.

VietNamNet/VOV