Online YDP: Adapting to the next normal

SUMMIT 2021 – TAKING BACK OUR SUMMER

This year’s Summit summer camp program was supposed to be held offline as normal, but because of the complicated pandemic situation, the first online version of YDP was organized to adapt to the new normal. Despite many inconveniences, the organizers and Summit-ers this year all tried their best to complete the program in the best way – reclaim the lost summer. And the program ultimately succeeded beyond expectations. 

 

YDP took  place from mid to late August 2021 and was an opportunity for our freshman and sophomore students  to learn the most necessary skills to excel at university as well as in the future professional work environment. Through many Summit generations, VietHope has continuously researched and improved the program to provide our VietHope scholars the most valuable summer experience. 

• 14/08: Intro Summit:

The summit started with an introduction about the program, and a special health care session from our guest speaker Mr. Nguyen Vu Dat who is a cardiologist at  Nguyen Tri Phuong Hospital. Dr Nguyen Vu Dat gave students practical advice on how to stay healthy and how  to face the pandemic with an active, positive mindset..

• 15/08: Presentation Skills

Presentation is a skill often evaluated by the delivery, however, to have a good delivery you must start with the right mindset. Ask important questions (What, Why, How) to clearly outline the goal to be achieved and to eliminate unnecessary details in your presentation. A right mindset, and a clear direction will make your presentation much more coherent and attractive.

Speaker Minh Huong instilled a lot of confidence in students with extremely practical and useful sharing drawn from her experience as a professional speaker that not only benefits students in the current academic environment but also prepares a solid foundation for a future professional environment.

• 18/08: Critical thinking skills

Thinking ability is always a challenging problem, but Mr. Le Tien Phong simplifies it with examples from Bloom’s Taxonomy. Students directly conducted group analysis activities and received feedback that helped improve this skill right in the classroom. Students gave feedback that they experienced a shift in their mindset and become more open-minded.

• 21/08: Project management skills

From each person’s initial hazy judgments about whether a phone, motorcycle, house, or daily shopping and cooking is a project or not, we concluded at the end of the lecture that most of the products around us are used to achieve some project goals.

At the same time, during the lesson, the students seemed to have opened their hearts and dared to speak more when taking advantage of the skills learned in previous classes to ask questions to the speaker with critical thinking or Google to find the steps to plan the project..

Finally, speakers Hoang and Mr. Stephan Ulrich also gave some tips, especially “brainstorming” strategies to assist in resolving problems and disagreements that occurred between members during project implementation.

 

Although the pandemic has taken away many opportunities, it has also brought many new opportunities and made us optimally adapt to the changes of the times. In particular, the best thing about the online Summit 2021 is that it will most likely help students expand their relationships with more friends from all over the country, including Hue, Can Tho, and Ho Chi Minh City, whereas when held offline, your networking circle will be much smaller. Besides, this Summit also witnessed the extremely creative bonding of the F12 generation when you guys actively participated in the ‘brown bumblebee’ challenge, and the bonding challenge after the program was “My friends are… .” Summit online 2021 has started a completely new adaptive version of VietHope, a great starting point.