[C2VN]: Cardano blockchain courseware in Universities

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Hieu Nguyen Van

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

Entity (Not Incorporated)

[GENERAL] Co-proposers and additional applicants

Pham Van Khanh

Ngoc Dung Bui

Bui Van Tan

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

6

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language

No

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

Our goal is to collect documents, organize a scientific council to create a Blockchain textbook and use it in official teaching at the University.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

No

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

No dependencies

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

Yes

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

We believe that this textbook will be an open source of documents that will be used officially in many technology universities in Vietnam.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

With close access to online/offline communities, universities we are seeing:

• IT students are the core force in developing Blockchain applications in the near future, however, there are currently no official, open educational resources (OER), standardized teaching materials on Blockchain in the University.
• Curriculum writing and approval are subject to the University's approval processes. It often takes time in some universities.
• With ~55K IT students graduating yearly, The expected shortage of human resources in IT- in Vietnam, but students are equipped with limited blockchain knowledge, not meeting the human resource needs of Vietnam and the world.
• Becoming a programmer on the Cardano blockchain platform can be a barrier for many developers because Cardano utilizes Haskell/Plutus, which are less common programming languages, and the community of participants is relatively limited compared to other languages. New languages like Aiken, Plu-ts, and Opshin have recently been released, so it takes time and guidance for the community to become familiar with them. Other foundation blockchain documents are scattered in many places in the English language.
• There are other blockchain platforms such as NEAR, SOLANA, COSMOS that are investing in free programming teaching on their platforms to attract developers, but there is no mainstream courseware in Uni yet.

With the predicted shortage of human resources in the field of Information Technology in general, and specifically in blockchain, as well as the barriers to becoming a Cardano blockchain developer, we believe that a fresh approach is needed to attract developers from outside the Cardano ecosystem.

Problem-solving:

Project participants include a team of lecturers with many years of experience in teaching and writing specialized IT textbooks. Understand the process of creating and publishing textbooks in Universities to realize the publication of Blockchain textbooks and put them into practice.

The project team will collect open source coursewares (like CBCA, AIKEN, PPP and other sources), Standardize, organize the assessment of academic levels and bring them into formal teaching in universities.

On each chapter of the curriculum, the names of the authors, editors, and acknowledgments that this is the achievement of a project funded by Project Catalyst will be documented.

Being designed as official courses, students who are interested, especially promising developers, will be motivated to engage with the materials and source code despite the difficulties. Once students become familiar with the Cardano ecosystem, they will bring their creative ideas and products to this platform. 

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

With the foresee challenges and solutions, we believe that the project will be completely suitable for the challenge because:

• Many students at the University have a desire to become proficient in programming on a blockchain platform. As the University does not currently offer a dedicated course, they often engage in free courses on platforms like NEAR, SOLANA, and BSC. This requires students to invest additional time and effort into learning without receiving recognition in their university profiles. Our courseware will become official material at the University. This will facilitate and encourage students' exploration and research. We believe this will be an excellent experience for students, incentivizing them and leading to increased adoption, productivity, and creativity.
•  Teaching this course at university and making them available as open educational resources (OER) for other institutions to reference, along with the Train the Trainer model, we anticipate a large number of students in the first cohort and subsequent cohorts will be attracted to join the Cardano ecosystem.
• Designed as official courses, the curriculum will encompass both theoretical knowledge, practical exercises, and completion of assignments. This serves as both motivation and a challenge for students at the university, keeping them motivated to persevere through the documentation and code, regardless of the difficulty. 

To measure the impact of the project, we considered these indicators:

1. Adoption and integration: The success will be measured by the number of universities that adopt the blockchain textbooks and integrate the courses into their curriculum.
2. Student enrollment: The success can also be assessed by the number of students enrolling in the blockchain courses. 
3. Teaching documents: The teaching duration, recording/pictures, number of course materials, and quiz/test will also be used by us to measure the success of the project.
4. Promote CBCA course: As an essential part of the course, we will recommend and support students to attend and complete the Cardano Foundation's CBCA course with the goal of standardizing learning outcomes for students. We expect at least 100 students to achieve CBCA certification after the end of this project.

To share the outputs and results of our project, we have the following plans:

Project Reports (PoM and PoA): 

We will submit a Statement of Milestones (SoM) which will be published, reviewed and approved by Community Reviewers. In each Milestone, we will public Proof of Achievement (PoA) to provide evidence that the milestone for which we have already been paid has been achieved. 

Release evidences/results on our website

We will outputs/results on our website at C2VN and our github where interested individuals can access our update proactively. Discuss or query us any topics they prefer.

Share outputs/results to social platforms (Cardano Forum, Facebook, telegram, twitter, youtube and github):

These will be places we share updates, success stories, and best practices. These will allow us to reach a larger audience and gather feedback and suggestions from the community, fostering a collaborative approach to decentralized identity adoption

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

The members of the project are the core team who organized the Community-Led Events Cardano Summit 2022 and Community-Led Events Cardano Summit 2023. We consist of technical experts from Cardano2vn.io and professors from 5 major universities.

(This is the picture of the Cardano summit CLE 2022)

(and Cardano summit CLE 2023)

We have been funded for 8 proposals (Fund6: 1, Fund7: 3, Fund8: 4) . All 8 projects have been successfully implemented, delivering impacts beyond expectations and marked as completed on IOG's tracking board . Here are some our activities we delivered for our community:

• Organizing 8 webinars on web3 and building web3 on the Cardano blockchain

(this is picture of our class)

• Supporting students in conducting scientific research on blockchain, building, and integrating their applications with Cardano
• Organizing and participating in “Together we learn Haskell”
• Introduce and promote Blockchain and AI research and development to Universities

• We are collaborating with Gimbalabs to bring the Gimbalabs PPBL2023 course to Vietnamese in our native language.

During the bear market, the project team regularly organized sharing sessions and networking events with universities, thereby collaborating with them to schedule both fundamental and advanced training. Below are some of the activities:

• Introduce Cardano and Project Catalyst at Nguyen Trai University
• Share oppotunies on Cardano and Project Catalyst for Students and lecture at ITI - National University, Hanoi
• Organizing 8 webinars on web3 and building web3 on the Cardano blockchain
• Cardano student showcases at Student Scientific and Research Conference at the University of Transport and Communications in Hanoi, Vietnam
• Promoting Blockchain, and AI research in universities

In 2024, representatives of 02 IT faculties of 02 universities wrote a outline for the course on blockchain and decentralized applications development.

The people who wrote these documents are members of the project team. Although the outline is written in Vietnamese, I believe that readers will see our efforts and desire to bring the Blockchain curriculum into mainstream teaching in universities in Vietnam with the help of technology. online translation tool. These 2 original files can be downloaded from here

In the current landscape, universities are yet to have an official blockchain curriculum, and the project team consisting of esteemed professors from various universities collaborating to develop the curriculum, along with the potential financial support from Project Catalyst, achieving the above goals is entirely feasible.

[PROJECT MILESTONES] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

The detailed breakdown of our project’s milestones and activities is avalable at this Google doc

MS1: First month

Milestone outputs:

• Organization Conference to establish a scientific council :
• Compiling a list of reference materials (books, documents, videos...)
• Conduct internal discussions to collectively study the materials.
• Setting standards of knowledge and skills for students who complete the course
• Project management (planning, organizing, and controlling resources, tasks, and activities to achieve specific project goals)

Acceptance criteria:

• The conference was held successfully with the expected members
• There are detailed links/files, storage locations for reference materials (books, documents, videos...). All project team members have access to these materials
• At the end of the seminar, you need to come up with a list of documents that will be used as reference to create a curriculum
• The standards of knowledge and skills for students will be approved by the department/university
• Project management needs to indicate completed work, outstanding activities and upcoming plans.

Evidence of milestone completion:

• Pictures/Recording of the conference
• The implementation team will publish the reference materials index to the public
• List of documents to use as reference to create the curriculum
• Evidence of approval of standards of knowledge and skills for students
• Meeting minutes/Recording will be shared to the public

2nd Month

Milestone outputs

• Write a detailed outline of the syllabus
• Assign each modules to team members
• Creating textbooks/slides
• Creating questions, exercises/labs
• Reviewing the textbooks/slides/labs
• Project management (planning, organizing, and controlling resources, tasks, and activities to achieve specific project goals)

Acceptance criteria

• Outline of the syllabus has the consensus of project team members. Consistent with standards of knowledge and skills for students
• It is necessary to assign tasks to ensure progress, with the right people in the right job.
• Textbooks/slides are detailed versions with content consistent with the outline of the syllabus
• Questions, exercises/labs are components that clarify content in textbooks/slides through question interaction and practice.
• Find content that is not consistent with the outline of the syllabus and suggest correction options
• Project management needs to indicate completed work, outstanding activities and upcoming plans.

Evidence of milestone completion

• A copy of the outline of the syllabus with the agreement of the project team will be posted to github
• Tasks assignments will be shared with the community on github
• A copy of textbooks/slides will be shared on github
• A copy of questions, exercises/labs will be shared on github
• Minutes of review meeting with findings and suggested modifications
• Meeting minutes/Recording will be shared to the public

3rd to 4th month

Milestone outputs:

• Updating the textbooks/slides/labs from review's findings 
• Organize a workshops to evaluate the textbooks/slides/labs
• Update and submit the textbooks/slides/labs for approval from Universities
• Promoting the course, open for enrollment at University
• Project management (planning, organizing, and controlling resources, tasks, and activities to achieve specific project goals)

Acceptance criteria:

• All findings are considered and corrected accordingly
• Invite professors with appropriate expertise to attend and evaluate
• Report the revised points and request approval from the department
• Advertise new courses on the University/Club's website or social networks
• Project management needs to indicate completed work, outstanding activities and upcoming plans.

Evidence of milestone completion:

• A copy of updated textbooks/slides will be shared on github
• Workshop minutes include participants and comments
• Reporting revised points with approval results will serve as evidence for the community
• PoA will have links to the posts
• Meeting minutes/Recording will be shared to the public

5th to 6th month

Milestone outputs:

• Delivery course as subjects at the first University (funded by University)
• Collect feedback from Students and teachers
• Reviewing and update courseware after the 1st delivery
• Public the courseware as a open educational resources (1st version)
• Introduction to Cardano Academy and CBCA course
• Project management and completion report and video submission

Acceptance criteria:

• The subject will be taught in at least 2 classes in the university.
• There are at least 3 reviews from 03 lecturers and 03 reviews from 03 students about the learning materials.
• Organize to update the curriculum after receiving feedback from lecturers and learners.
• The final update will be publicly available for other universities/institutes to refer to
• The CBCA course and other Cardano Academy courses will be introduced in each course. Motivate students to complete and take the certification exam
• Project management needs to indicate completed work, outstanding activities and upcoming plans.

Evidence of milestone completion:

• Pictures taken in class can be accompanied by Recording
• Reports of feedbacks will be shared on github
• Summary of revised points in the learning materials
• The learning material link will be announced in the PoA
• Introductory images of CBCA, Cardano Academy in the classroom will be shared in the PoA report
• Meeting minutes/Recording will be shared to the public

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Our core team member are:

Nguyen Van Hieu

Role: Project Manager, Product Owner, Blockchain Developer

Bio: Founder of HADA stake pool, member of Plutus Pioneer Program, and Lead Technical Support at many successful startups.

•   Telegram:
•   Linkedin:
•   Facebook:

Hoang Van Thong

Role: Curriculum Quality Assurance Officer

Bio: Lecturer (since 2001) and Dean of Faculty of Information Technology (since 2020), University of Transportation and Communications, computer science experts, developed many websites

• Fields research: fuzzy logic, soft computing, data mining, machine learning.
• LinkedIn
• Email: thonghv@utc.edu.vn
• Facebook

Cao Thi Luyen,

Role: Curriculum Development member

Bio: Lecturer (since 2001) of the Faculty of Information Technology, University of Transportation and Communications, received a Ph.D. in mathematical assurance in computational systems at the military academy of science and technology (since 2018). developed many applications.

• Fields research: watermarking, data hiding, machine learning, blockchain. 
• LinkedIn
• Email: luyenct@utc.edu.vn 

Mai Manh Trung

Role: Curriculum Development member

Bio: Lecturer of Faculty of Information Technology, University of Economics - Technology for Industries, computer science expert.

• Email: mmtrung@uneti.edu.vn

Bui Van Tan

Role: Curriculum Development member

Bio: Lecturer of Faculty of Information Technology, University of Economics - Technology for Industries

• Email: bvtan@uneti.edu.vn

Ngoc Dung Bui

Role: Curriculum Development member

• Senior researcher in AI and computer vision
• Senior lecturer at Information Technology, University of Transport and Communications, Vietnam
• 16 years experience in AI
• https://scholar.google.com.vn/citations?user=zxiSmOAAAAAJ&hl=en

Pham Van Khanh, Dr.

Role: Curriculum Development member

Bio: Lecturer at Military Technical Academy, Hanoi, Vietnam.

• Scientific Research profile

Nguyen Anh Tien

Role: Project Advisor

Bio: the founder of the VILAI stake pool, and a computer science expert working in the Cardano/Crypto space since 2018. Cardano Ambassador, Funded Proposer, member of Plutus, Atala Prism Pioneer Program, a Challenge Team member and Co-host for Eastern Town Hall.

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Telegram

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

The detailed breakdown of our project’s milestones and activities is avalable at this Google doc.it is summarized here for your quick reference.

Milestone1: First month 18895 ADA = 20,54%

Milestone2: 2nd Month 25105 ADA = 27,29%

Milestone3: 3rd to 4th Month 26947 ADA = 29,29%

Milestone4: 5th to 6th Month 21053 ADA = 22,88%

Total: 92000 ADA

And budget is breakdowns as below:

[VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

We have full confidence that the project represents value for money for the Cardano ecosystem, based on the following contributions:

• This project is purely about creating an approved curriculum that is allowed to be taught in the university where the project team members are working. We believe that these are the first steps to bring blockchain in general and Cardano in particular into mass training in universities.

• At the end of the chapter of the document, there will be a recognition of Project Catalyst's contributions-> Many students will know Project Catalyst from here.

• We will work with Cardano Academy to take advantage of each other's strengths in building curriculum, thereby promoting Cardano's image to students.

• Once students are familiar with the programming environment and Cardano ecosystem, they will develop applications on this platform and when they graduate, they will continue to do so and introduce their friends to build dapps on it.