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As part of the state visit to China from April 14 to 17, 2026 by General Secretary and President Tô Lâm, the Vietnam-China Forum on Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation co-organized by VNU and Tsinghua University emerged as a key highlight. The forum emphasized practical, results-driven cooperation, placing people’s benefit at the center, while identifying education, science and technology, innovation, and digital transformation as priority pillars in bilateral relations.
Within this broader momentum, the AI Tutor project between VNU and Z.ai stands out as a concrete example of a shift from academic exchange to co-development in training, research, and real-world technological deployment. VNU’s official portal recognized the project as a notable academic milestone at the forum, highlighting it as a representative case of collaboration in artificial intelligence, data, and digital transformation.
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During the project showcase, VNU researchers introduced a new approach to applying AI in Vietnam’s general education system. Rather than replacing teachers or simply providing answers, the AI Tutor is designed to guide students step by step—supporting structured learning, personalized understanding, and independent thinking in a modern educational context.
The system is positioned as an intelligent tutoring solution for Vietnamese students, initially focusing on lower secondary mathematics (grades 6–9), with plans to expand to broader K–12 subjects. Instead of delivering instant answers, it emphasizes guided reasoning: offering hints, prompting critical thinking, identifying mistakes, and supporting the development of learning skills. This pedagogically grounded approach aligns with ongoing educational reforms in the digital era.
At a time when Vietnam is positioning science, technology, innovation, and digital transformation as core drivers of development, initiatives like the AI Tutor project—bridging universities, enterprises, and advanced technologies—carry particular significance. In his remarks at the forum, President Tô Lâm underscored education and high-quality human resource development as a “top priority,” encouraging expanded collaboration in research, joint laboratories, and key fields such as artificial intelligence.
From this perspective, the AI Tutor project is not merely an edtech product but a tangible effort to translate high-level bilateral cooperation into applications with meaningful social impact. Its goal is to provide students nationwide with a more accessible, intelligent, and user-friendly learning tool, while also supporting parents and teachers in guiding learners ultimately fostering a more engaging, effective, and human-centered educational environment.
Initial results from the project’s Proof of Concept (PoC) are promising. Based on user feedback collected in March 2026, the system achieved an average rating of 8.7/10, with 87% of users scoring it between 7 and 9. Scores for “content understanding” reached 8.36, while “intent understanding” reached 8.6. Notably, users rated the system highest for its step-by-step guidance approach, reinforcing that its key value lies in pedagogical interaction rather than simply generating answers.
Looking ahead, VNU and Z.ai plan to further enhance the system across several priority areas: improving stability and response speed, strengthening Vietnamese language processing, expanding multimodal capabilities (especially for visual and geometry problems), structuring learning content by grade and topic, and introducing progress-tracking tools for students, parents, and teachers. The long-term vision is to build a comprehensive platform supporting Vietnamese K–12 education through personalized learning and stronger coordination between schools, families, and technology.
Ultimately, the AI Tutor project represents more than a standalone technological experiment. It reflects VNU’s academic capabilities, international collaboration strength, and ability to translate knowledge into real-world impact in the AI era—while also illustrating a new model of partnership between universities and leading technology companies, aimed at directly serving education, learners, and the future of high-quality human capital development in Vietnam.
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