On the morning of November 21, 2021, HCMC Open University held an online conference for students conducting scientific research in order to summarize and re-evaluate their scientific research activities in the 2020-2021 school year; Accepting students' feedback, orienting and developing measures to promote scientific research movement among university students. Attending the ceremony were the administration board, representatives from HCMCOU, departments and more than 800 students.

In his opening keynote, Prof. Dr. Nguyen Minh Ha - President of the University remarked, “HCMCOU has persistently focused on encouraging and facilitating the scientific research development among learners and for many years, the number of students contributing to scientific research activities has increased constantly. Not only limited to School-level activities, students also actively participate in competitions outside the school such as the Ministerial-level scientific research contest and the Eureka Award research competition. Thus, HCMCOU is always highly evaluated as one of the Universities with strong student scientific research movement.”

In the academic year 2020-2021, nearly 400 projects have been registered and all of them have been reviewed professionally and required to pass a vastly competitive selection. As a result, there were nearly 300 projects approved for implementation. In the last academic year, despite the sudden outbreak of Covid-19 in early 2021 and the lockdowns made it difficult for students to implement their projects, more than 200 topics were still completed. These projects were carefully and rigorously evaluated by professional councils and there were 31 first prizes, 34 second prizes and 28 third prizes selected. Additionally, not only limited to the School-level competition, in the last school year, students of HCMCOU achieved many awards from various competitions: National Science Research Student in 2020, Eureka Competition. Furthermore, students also actively participated in other academic competitions such as the Mechanics for Physics Olympiads, Informatics Olympiad, innovation and start-up competitions and also achieved commendable results.

To encourage scientific research among students, HCMCOU always has flexible and appropriate policies for students' scientific research activities, from direct policies such as granting scientific research scholarships, policies to support topics as well as students participate in competitions, policies to encourage lecturers in guiding and motivating students to participate in research with them. In particular, students are entitled to support policies and rewarded for official projects and technology transition that is completely similar to their lecturers.

At the conference, the teachers attending the program discussed and exchanged with students as well as answered some difficulties in the research process. In addition, MA. Tran Duc Su shared, “…In order to have a good scientific research paper, your topic is full of 4 criteria: novelty - topicality; creativity; science and applicability. And accompanied by a research group strong enough, eager enough to research a favorite topic”.