Thailand
SEAMEO TVET EXCHANGE PROGRAMME
Description
I. Background
All Southeast Asian countries have positioned Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in the mainstream of education systems and set it as a priority in their education agendas due to its crucial role in the socio-economic development of a nation.
To promote the internationalisation of TVET institutions and improve international competitiveness and employability of TVET students in Southeast Asian countries, the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) in collaboration with Ministries of Education, other TVET-relevant Ministries, and TVET institutions have introduced the SEAMEO Polytechnic Network. The Network of colleges, polytechnics, and university of technologies from Southeast Asia conducts regional exchange programmes and other collaborations to provide their students and faculty staff with international education experiences.
As recommended during the 3rd High Officials Meeting on SEA-TVET, hosted by the Ministry of Education of Malaysia in May 2017, the SEAMEO Secretariat serves as a coordinator and facilitator of the exchange programmes.
Since 2018, the SEAMEO Secretariat in collaboration with TVET institutions and relevant Ministries have implemented the “SEAMEO Polytechnic Meeting” twice a year as a “Meeting Platform” to discuss the implementation process and seek commitments from the participating institutions for SEA-TVET Student Exchange Programme. As a result, the SEA-TVET Student Exchange Programme has been implemented for 4 batches with the total number of 1,143 TVET students exchanged in 2018-2019 between Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Disrupted by the pandemic, the exchange has been halted and the planned 5th batch could not be conducted in 2020. After reassessing the current global and regional situation, SEAMEO has decided to conduct the first virtual student exchange under the SEAMEO TVET Exchange Programme starting May 2022. The first batch of the virtual student exchange will be conducted as a pilot with institutions from Southeast Asia.
II. Forms, Templates, and Guidelines
All required Forms, optional Templates, and Guidelines can be found at the top right corner of this page:
III. SEAMEO Virtual Exchange Platform
Participating institutions, teachers, and students have access to the SEAMEO Virtual Exchange Platform:
The Platform is specifically designed to facilitate communication and collaboration before, during, and after the exchange. It provides a home to the SEAMEO TVET Network, with already over 500 Members.
News: This is where the latest internal updates on anything regarding the virtual exchange programme.
Conversations: Post questions to the community or SEAMEO, address topics that are of interest to you, or just have a friendly conversation with your peers.
Resources: The Resources Tab contains documents, guidelines, user manuals, and links that will help with the virtual exchange. This ranges from information how to use the virtual platform, to the virtual exchange framework, to forms and templates prepared by SEAMEO.
Training: The SEAMEO Virtual Exchange Platform comes with its own learning management system. Teachers are free to use this for creating and managing their own Classes, whether in context of the virtual exchange or their regular teaching. We highly encourage educators to use this feature to share their knowledge and teachings with all exchange participants. Please feel free to create your own classes any time. You can find a in-depth guide on Classes here.
Groups: Groups allow participants to come together and host discussions, upload their own documents, and manage their members. There are several groups for all participants, such as the Matchmaking Group. Each institutional partnership pair has their own group where coordinators, teachers, and students can share documents, communicate, develop and work on joint projects, and much more.
Collaborate: The Collaborate feature can be used to create requests for collaboration on any topic (including for sending and receiving students). Other members can easily contact you for further collaboration.
If your institution would like to join the platform, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
IV. Participating Institutions
The 1st Batch of the SEAMEO virtual Student Exchange in 2022 will be conducted between approximately 750 students of 75 participanting TVET Institutions from within Southeast Asia.
Participating Institutions are TVET Colleges, Universities and Polytechnics who offer post-secondary qualifications.
V. Study Areas
The exchange will include students from the following study areas:
Preferred:
- Computer Science/IT/ Informatics
- Multimedia/ Creative Industry
- Business/Entrepreneurship
Optional:
- Hospitality and Tourism
- Health Science
- Agriculture/Animal Science
- Mechatronics/Electronics/Manufacturing
VI. Exchange Window and Duration
Institutions can agree on their own schedule and duration for exchange. The core exchange window will be from 16. May – 24. June 2022 but to accomodate all academic calendars, exchange past or after this core exchange window is supported. Institutions can conduct more than one set of exchange within this timeframe.
Suggested Duration: The suggested duration for the TVET Student Exchange is 3-4 weeks but is up to the agreement between partner institutions.
Partner institutions agree among themselves on the hours per day spent by the exchange students in online classes of the receiving institution.
VII. Curriculum Recognition
Since credits vary across each TVET education system, the credit recognition is up to the Sending Institutions by considering the number of hours that the students participate in the virtual exchange.
VIII. Previous SEAMEO TVET Exchange
You can find more information about the SEAMEO TVET Exchange Programmes of the past here.
IX. Briefing Meeting 15 March 2022 Recording
More information about the Briefing Meeting can be found here.