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As Vietnam needs to shift from physical to virtual classrooms owing to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, this study aims to propose and evaluate a constructivist training course designed to improve instructors’ self-confidence in conducting synchronous online teaching by helping them develop the skills required for such.

A total of 67 in-service instructors in various hospitality and tourism institutions in Vietnam participated in the proposed course. Constructivist approaches were adopted to design learning activities. Delivered via Blackboard Collaborate’s classroom version, the course aims at enhancing instructors’ self-confidence in the knowledge and skills required for synchronous online teaching: developing online presence, planning lessons, handling technology, adapting to learners’ preferences and classroom management. Using qualitative and quantitative analyses, this paper evaluated the proposed course by comparing participants’ levels of self-confidence in conducting synchronous online teaching before and after the training.

The results show that participants’ self-confidence was enhanced after the course. To improve the course, however, more time should be allotted for practice sessions where participants can pedagogically and technologically familiarize themselves with online teaching tools.

By translating constructivism into online pedagogy, this study provided empirical evidence of how a teachers’ training program was designed and implemented to meet the need to shift from real-life to real-time classrooms in Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also contributes to the growing literature on methods of improving instructors’ readiness in synchronous online teaching.

“The world needs science, science needs women” is the message given by UNESCO in the program for the development of women in science” (UNESCO, 2017). In Vietnam, women’s participation and achievements in scientific research is considered a great and important resource for industrialization and modernization. Even so, are there gender differences in scientific achievement in the social science research institutes in Vietnam? What factors influence the scientific achievement of female social researchers? The answers will be based on data from a 2017 survey with a sample of 756 researchers, of which 77.6% were female. The survey was conducted by the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, a leading, ministry-level national center for the social sciences in Vietnam. This chapter analyzed the scientific achievements of researchers through their position as principal investigators of research projects and their publications, and factors that may impact this. Bivariate and multivariate analyses of factors that may affect the scientific achievement of researchers found that gender differences in academic achievement in the social sciences in Vietnam was still prevalent. Female researchers’ scientific achievements were lower than those of their male counterparts. The contribution to science of Vietnamese female researchers was limited by many different factors; the most important were the academic rank of the researchers and gender stereotype that considered housework the responsibility of women.