In today’s dynamic learning environment, effective collaboration and communication among students and faculty is crucial. Space, time, student mobility, class size, and classroom settings are prime factors to consider when conducting collaborative group activities in a traditional classroom. Integrating technology is a great way to address these factors and create an active and collaborative learning space in the modern classroom.
This blog post explores the potential of Discord, a platform initially known for gaming communities, as a powerful tool for fostering collaborative learning and discussion within higher education settings. We will examine its features and demonstrate its applicability for various academic activities, drawing on specific examples to highlight its effectiveness.
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping numerous aspects of our lives, and higher education is no exception. The generation of students entering universities today will witness more technological change than ever before. Yet, how can we help our teachers —the guides of this generation— be better prepared for this evolving landscape? To this aim, HKU TALIC presented a series of edTech and AI workshops on emerging technologies with a focus on practical strategies and resources. The workshops were created to provide teachers and the university community more options to enhance student learning, and to cultivate AI literacy and ICT skills. The first workshop held in Spring 2024 focused on the power of prompt engineering, as well as providing tactics and practical examples in AI prompting for teaching practice.
HKU ITS provides staff and students with the ChatGPT and DALL∙E web apps (https://chatgpt.hku.hk/), which are powered by Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI services to improve teaching and learning effectiveness, productivity, and the overall educational experience.
Message from Faculty of Dentistry – Global Dental Campus – Online
Dear All,
We are pleased to announce that the 1st Aesthetic Dentistry MOOC, “Fundamentals of Aesthetic Dentistry”, will start on 26 Sept 2023 (TODAY) on edX. Embark on a captivating journey through the realm of aesthetic treatments with our dynamic online lecture and demonstration series. This trio of MOOCs offers a comprehensive exploration of aesthetic dentistry, from core concepts (MOOC 1) to cutting-edge, minimally invasive methods (MOOC 2) and advanced techniques (MOOC 3). Delivered by a stellar lineup of global and local industry pioneers, our courses bring you the freshest insights and trends in Aesthetic Dentistry.
The HKU Cardiac Imaging Professional Certificate program is the first professional certificate program of its kind, specializing in non-invasive cardiac imaging technology in Asia. The program was created by Dr Ming-yen Ng’s team at the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and HKU Medicine. The program consists of two courses: Computed Tomography (CT) and Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (MRI). These courses are designed to offer medical practitioners worldwide specialized training in cardiac imaging technology pedagogies and clinical training.
According to the Cardiac Imaging course director and key instructor, Dr Ming-yen Ng, “The main objective of the program is to deliver a meticulously designed, modern 21st-century medical education program that could be accessed conveniently worldwide through a user-friendly online course platform on edX.”
Recent research showed a growing demand for skilled cardiac imaging personnel, posing difficulties for many nations in meeting national medical service demands. It will be essential to invest in training to effectively meet the rising demand.
Dr. Ming-Yen said, “There are very few cardiac imaging clinical training programs, and those limited availability of in-person workshops or hospital placements, are both costly and time-intensive. The team at HKU has established collaborations with esteemed practitioners, scholars, and members of international and regional cardiac imaging societies to provide comprehensive and cost-effective training courses that could help medical practitioners in both developed nations and developing nations access expertise in cardiac CT and MRI.”
The HKU Cardiac Imaging online program has received international recognition from the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) and the Society of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR). HKU Cardiac Imaging MOOCs received the GOLD Award Winner of 2021 Reimagine Education, and the Cardiac CT MOOC was a 2021 edX Prize Finalist.
Designing a modern 21st-century medical education experience
The cardiac imaging MOOCs were carefully crafted to foster learners’ engagement and maximize the online learning experience. The MOOCs incorporated a “flipped workshop”, 360-degree video simulations, interactive games, and an information chatbot to facilitate online participation and active learning among learners.
Using “flipped workshop” to solve clinical cases online
The team introduces the “flipped workshop” concept utilizing modern learning techniques and cutting-edge technology. Participants in each of the Cardiac CT and MRI courses examine and solve 50 authentic clinical cases online with their peers and instructors via a case-based methodology comparable to the on-campus learning approach utilized at HKU School of Medicine. Additionally, learners interact with online peers through discussion forums, and actively engage in collaborative work and discourse as a learning group.
Observing the heart in 360-degree motion
Innovative edTech tools and technology for medical practice and education can improve learners’ understanding of complicated anatomical structure of internal organs. In the Cardiac CT and MRI courses, 360-degree video simulations of the heart give students a special and enriching learning experience.
Dr. Ming-yen described the use of 360-degree videos as a novel educational opportunity in cardiac imaging studies:
“We worked with HKU TALIC team to develop a heart model with 360-degree video simulations in order to facilitate a comprehensive examination of the heart’s anatomy and dynamic movement. It was a pioneering effort to enable learners to perceive the organ’s profundity and motion as if they were observing it in real-time on a screen in an operating room. This not only facilitated the learners’ understanding of the anatomy of the organ, but also enhanced their comprehension of cardiac structures and principles in cardiac imaging in clinical studies.”
Using games to reinforce and assess students knowledge and skills
To stimulate lively interactions of online participants, two interactive online games were incorporated into the courses to promote more active engagement.
The first game on drug administration aimed to acquaint learners with various cardiac CT medications and to assess their understanding of these medications through drug administration case challenges. The second game challenges participants to employing their knowledge of MRI cardiac technology that they gained through the course to solve obstacles in the game, including tasks such as modifying in-game MRI artifacts with the aim of resolving cardiac imaging case complications. Among these complications were patients with irregular cardiac rhythms and those who had trouble holding their breath during imaging procedures.
To foster a constructive learning experience, the games facilitated spaced repetition in the development of skills and knowledge, provided guided assessment and feedback, and offered incentives to encourage achievement.
Chatbot for round-the-clock assistance for learners enquiries
The course includes a chatbot that provides immediate text-based support for any questions learners may have about the course contents. The users acknowledged the accessibility and convenience of the chatbot as a means of providing immediate feedback to students. Additionally, it was observed that a substantial number of students appreciated this feature’s availability 24/7.
Impacts beyond the global MOOCs on digital platforms
In addition to the notable teaching and learning features of the MOOC in course design, the course has had significant effects and has extended educational opportunities well beyond its digital platform to over 24,600 learners worldwide, spanning across 164 countries and jurisdictions.
The MOOCs have established strong academia-industry partnerships and are sponsored by prominent imaging technology companies, including Circle Cardiovascular Imaging, Bayer, GE Healthcare, and TeraRecon. Academic-industry collaborations have enabled the expansion of cardiac imaging into numerous medical and healthcare sectors.
The Hong Kong government and professional bodies in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, such as the Hong Kong College of Radiologists, Hong Kong College of Physicians, and the Royal College of Radiologists (UK), recognize the Cardiac Imaging MOOCs as meeting Continuing Medical Education (CME) and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements.
ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot developed by OpenAI. ChatGPT currently can communicate with clients through text conservations and can execute complicated language tasks, including summarization. Alternatives to ChatGPT include Perplexity.AI and Quora Poe. These bots can facilitate teaching, learning and assessment in the long term. Meanwhile, in this blog post, we mainly discuss on:
How to identify essays through detection tools or other mechanisms, and
How to design ChatGPT-resilient essay assignments and other assessments.
Identifying essays that ChatGPT creates
It is always challenging to detect essays that ChatGPT creates. Since ChatGPT created different responses every time, even with the same prompt, it is difficult for “Turnitin Similarity” to detect contents created by ChatGPT. As told by colleagues from Turnitin, Turnitin is currently developing tools for detection.
There are existing detection tools, including GPTZero, Open AI Text Classifierand Writer AI Content Detector. These detectors often detect the perplexity and burstiness of the article to identify if the article is created by humans. You can also simply import the article to ChatGPT to calculate the perplexity and burstiness of the article. These tools are user-friendly, but these detectors often cannot provide a correct judgement in our testing.
If multiple essays from the same students are provided, we can check whether the writing style across essays is similar. Teachers can analyse manually or through computational linguistics tools like Coh-Metrix. For example, students often write essays with American or British spelling only, and with a similar standard deviation of the mean length of paragraphs and the mean length of sentences as well as referential cohesion (and some other computational linguistics metrics).
Besides analysing the content and writing style, we can also examine the metadata of the essay submission files. If students submit the essay through MS Word files, you can check if there are abnormalities in the properties of the essay file. If students used MS Word throughout the writing process, there should be several revisions, and the date created and modified should not be too close. Students can also provide a version history if students used Google Docs for writing.
Designing ChatGPT-resilient essay assignments
Besides analysing the content of the essay, you can also identify essays by analysing the writing process. For example, you can ask students to:
Submit draft notes or a writing plan in the early stage of the assignment (and compare them with the final essay)
Record the writing process through Zoom screen sharing
Reflect on the writing process and evaluate the meta-cognitive process of the student
Teachers can also ask students to write multiple essays such that we can examine if the writing style is different across essays.
As reported in recent studies published on arXiv (Study 1 and Study 2), ChatGPT currently is still not perfect in some reasoning skills, including inductive reasoning, non-textual semantic reasoning (spatial reasoning, mathematical reasoning), multi-hop reasoning, physical reasoning and psychological reasoning. Teachers can consider designing essay questions that partially assess the abovementioned reasoning skills. Teachers can read these studies for more details and get inspired to create appropriate essay questions. For example,
Teachers can think about designing assignments that require explanation through infographics, figures and maps.
Teachers can add atypical requirements that systems often overlook, such as “In the third sentence of your response, the first word should be started with the letter “C” and one of the words should be started with the letter “V” “.
Teachers can ask students to provide more references to support their arguments.
These practices can increase the hurdles of directly copying content generated from AI tools as answers.
Teachers are also encouraged to assess students in multiple ways and examine whether students’ performance in essay assessments aligns with other assessments.
Using ChatGPT ethically in assignments and T&L
If you allow students to use ChatGPT in your assignments, besides providing proper citations, you can consider asking students to write an additional reflection on the following:
The comparison between human development and AI-facilitated development
Their experience in using ChatGPT to speed up the development process
Current limitations and how the AI-facilitated development process could be improved.
You can find more ideas from Dr Ethan Mollick from the University of Pennsylvania and Dr Sean McMinn from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on using AI tools to facilitate teaching, learning and assessments. Other interesting ChatGPT prompts can be found online.
Author: Dr Leon Lei
The author has used Grammarly to polish the article, but has not used ChatGPT in the writing process. The recording of the writing process can be found at https://youtu.be/1eD86rorzCA. The article may be further updated without notice.
Learn the top FinTech technologies that are transforming today’s world of finance and technology
FinTech is not only a major strategic focus in the banking and finance industry around the world. The fast-moving FinTech technologies also create opportunities and pose challenges to global financial institutions, large tech giants, techfins, retailers and other global companies and the legal and compliance sectors. Besides technology innovations and R&D in FinTech, nurturing FinTech talents and attracting students and professionals to the FinTech arena is very important.
In this MOOC, we will discuss six advanced technologies that drive transformation in the finance and technology industries today from a layman’s perspective. The contents will focus on how these technologies are used in FinTech applications including, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP) and big data analytics in daily scenarios such as insutech, robo-advisory, intelligent transport monitoring, applications in green finance, as well as, blockchain and distributed ledger technology in banking and DiFi.
Instructional design, educational technologies, video production, user interface, online collaboration, digital literacy … and so on. These are the key elements that often come up in people’s mind when talking about the development of online curriculum. Many teachers are willing to enrich student learning experiences or make learning more effective by turning their course into a flipped classroom or a blended learning format but feel somewhat headless on how to start.
The use of powerful and user-friendly e-learning tools is essential for teachers to generate engaging contents and learning activities in the online context. Therefore, we’ve prepared the E-learning for All – A Toolkits Series workshops to introduce a range of EdTech tools that can help teachers transform their courses and enhance learning experiences.
Diverse tools in the current market are providing great possibilities, this workshop will focus on the following most common toolkits and provide related examples. We hope that, with creative, cost-effective, and easy-to-master technologies, everyone can be an instructional designer!
edX announced the world’s Top MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) shortlisted for 2022 edX Prize – Innovation in Online Teaching on Nov 17 2022. HKU MOOC So You Want To Be A Surgeon? is named 2022 edX Prize Finalist this year. The MOOC is led by Dr. Ian Yu-Hong Wong, Professor Stephen Wing-Keung Cheng and Professor Kent-Man Chu of the Department of Surgery with the support of HKU’s Technology Enriched Learning Initiative unit. This is the fifth consecutive year that HKU MOOC has gained global recognition as edX Prize Finalist.
According to Anant Agarwal, edX Founder and Chief Platform Officer at 2U, “the MOOCs on edX are committed to provide the world’s best open education to more than 46 million learners.” In addressing the prestigious 2022 edX Prize, Anant said, “this year’s finalists are recognized for creating best-in-class online learning experiences that deliver learner-centric, impactful outcomes on the edX platform.”
Being recognised as top 10 finalist out of thousands of MOOCs for five consecutive years attest to HKU’s continued pursuit of excellence and dedication in online course design and production and this achievement reflects the course team’s innovative spirit to inspire and upskill learning beyond international boundaries and time zones.
First-of-its-kind co-production by 15 surgical subspecialties
HKU So You Want To Be A Surgeon? is a first-of-its-kind surgery MOOC co-created by 40 world-class surgical experts from 15 subspecialties of HKU’s Department of Surgery (including vascular, thyroid, breast, gastrointestinal, colorectal, hepatobiliary and pancreatic, transplant, head and neck, plastic and reconstructive surgeries, urology, paediatric, trauma, cardiothoracic surgeries, and neurosurgery). This unique co-creation truly exemplifies the team work and cross-disciplinary collaboration that are crucial in carrying out a life-saving operation.
21st century work-based learning experience
The MOOC aims to help young students aspiring to become surgeons and physicians to learn about common clinical and surgical conditions, and modern advances and cutting-edge technologies in surgical practice at HKU Medicine and in the world. To create a robust learning experience for the 21st century learners, the course integrated subject domain learning with a work-based learning experience (WBL), providing career-relevant knowledge and experience sharing by 30+ local and international surgeons from different career stages.
The role of gender and achieving work-life balance for female surgeons
The job of a surgeon is both physically and mentally demanding for both male and female surgeons – one has to endure long hours of extremely high-focused work in an operating theater without rest. Today, gender perceptions in pursuing surgery as a career have changed and more aspiring female students have joined the world of surgery. Achieving work-life balance is never easy, in particular for the highly demanding work of a surgeon. Learners in the course are invited to view and follow six female surgeons who are at different stages of their career to learn about what surgery means to these females, and how they found work-life balance and job satisfaction.
Doing Gender and Why it Matters(4th Re-run) is a 6-week MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) taught by more than 20 faculty members from HKU and professionals engaged in gender-related developments in Asia. The course starts on 28 Septemberon edX.
Doing Gender and Why it Matters is taught by over 20 HKU instructors, practitioners and academics in the field.
Why are we creating an online course about gender? More specifically, why does gender matter?
As you will be aware of from recent media coverage, gender is everywhere in society. Our daily lives are embedded in gender. From our social roles, to our attitudes and behaviours, to our interactions with others, and in our work, gender is ever present. Now with the call for gender equality gaining public prominence, we hope to give you the tools and lens for understanding what exactly is gender – moreover, to be aware of certain gender stereotypes and unconscious biases that are ever present.
Let’s take this 6-week journey to unveil myths, taboos, and knowledge about gender together, navigating cross-culturally, historically, philosophically and sociologically. Some of the questions we’ll explore include: How do we define gender? What assumptions and biases emerge in our relationships within the family, work and politics? How does the media construct gender? How should we interpret the recent #metoo campaign? Sexual harassment, discrimination, sexual violence are gender relevant social issues that we will take you through.
What to expect after taking this course?
After six weeks, you will become an expert on gender issues, and be able to have your own critical perspectives about them to evaluate current events. Even more, to start having these conversations with your friends and family and make an impact!
What’s new in the 4th rerun course?
A new thematic unit of “Gender in Health System and Policy Gender” with a series of video lessons in Sexuality Education is added to the “Private and Public Spheres” unit in the Rerun course. Among the new topics are HIV/AIDS, The Social Construction of Female and Male Body and Sexuality Education.
A bit more about us…
‘Doing Gender and Why it Matters?’ is MOOC course offered by the University of Hong Kong. Led by Prof. Karen Joe Laidler from Department of Sociology, in collaboration with the Women Study’s Research Centre (WSRC), this course is a joint effort of scholars from different discipline such as law, history, culture, sexuality, who feel strongly about gender issues in Hong Kong, and wider globe.
Message from Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative
Miro’ the blended learning design: Hands-on Workshop
(For HKU staff and students only)
Date: 20 September 2022 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:30pm – 1:45pm
Venue: Virtual Venue – via zoom
Speaker: Dr Leon Lei, Ms Lynn H. Lin, Ms Marie Tao, Ms Colleen Chung, Mr Sunny Kong
Number of seats: 60
Registration: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?UEID=84104
The university has been exploring and incorporating various technologies to embrace the challenge of distance learning and enrich student learning experiences. Miro is one of the popular whiteboard tools that is often integrated in the learning activities to enhance online collaboration.
To help both teachers and students get better prepared for the new semester and bring some insights to the blended learning design, in this workshop, we will demonstrate some basic and advanced Miro functions. While practicing the Miro functions, we will together brainstorm and walk through some good practices of online assessment and the application of Bloom Digital Taxonomy (BDT) in coursework development under different classroom settings.
To have hands-on practices in the workshop, it would be helpful for participants to register the Miro Education Plan to have full access to the functions before joining the workshop. Please join the workshop with a computer / laptop.
