Teaching Development Grants

    Proposal for an English in the Discipline project for the Social Sciences

    Principal Investigator Co-Investigator(s) Approved Funding Project Timeline
    Ms. A.M. Storey Dr. Joanna Lee
    Dr. Max Hui
    Mr. Parco Wong
    Ms. Julie Ng     		$598,197 Jul 1, 2010 – Aug 31, 2011

    Project Overview

    This application aims to provide support to the Centre for Applied English Studies to facilitate the development of three six-credit English in the Discipline courses for the Faculty of Social Sciences:

    1. English for Psychologists
    2. Dissertation Writing in the Social Sciences
    3. Media Writing and Narrative

    These courses will be part of a range of five courses to be offered to students in the new curriculum in line with the broad-based orientation of social sciences programmes.

    Project Objectives

    The overall project aim is to enhance students’ language learning experience through a flexible, inter-disciplinary approach to the English in the Discipline curriculum. Specifically, the project objectives are to:

    1. Identify the language features of the focal areas of each course: dissertation writing in the social sciences, narrative journalism, and written genres in psychology;
    2. Develop a rationale and a framework for the development of each course;
    3. Produce syllabi, course materials, assessment tasks and standards-based criteria for assessment for each course;
    4. Identify and develop evaluation instruments to measure the success of the courses.

    Project Deliverables

    The specific outcomes or deliverables for each strand of the project are:

    1. Curricular development frameworks and rationales.
    2. Detailed course descriptions with learning outcomes that articulate with the University and Faculty outcomes.
    3. Course materials containing teaching and learning activities, project descriptions, grade descriptors and learning resources comprising 150 hours spent on class activities, independent learning and assessment tasks.
    4. An online learning environment to allow for dissemination of PowerPoint slides, interactive tasks, forums and blogs for reflection on and discussion of course content.
    5. Standards-based assessment criteria based on learning outcomes.
    6. A range of evaluation mechanisms to assess different stages of the project and the student learning experience.