Macao Delegation Visits HKU

Knowledge exchange with fellow academics through collaboration and outreach is always an important part of TELI. On 12 October 2016, we were honored to welcome a Macao education delegation to HKU.

Initiated by the Macao Tertiary Education office, the purpose of the half-day visit was to share and exchange HKU’s experience in e-learning, MOOCs and language teaching with the delegation.

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We welcomed a total of 23 delegates from 8 Macao higher education institutions, which included Vice Presidents, Faculty Deans, Language professors and Admin personnel. It was led by Prof. SUN Jian Rong (Macau University of Science and Technology) and Prof. JIN Hong Gan (University of Macau).

The day opened with an introduction of HKU’s e-learning landscape and visions for online learning by TELI.

After introducing the wider picture, Prof. Gina Marchetti from the Department of Comparative Literature then introduced and shared her hands-on experiences on creating an upcoming MOOC called Hong Kong Cinema through a Global Lens. To produce a rewarding MOOC, Prof. Marchetti stressed the importance of identifying your academic strengths, using existing content alongside supporting research, and working with a team throughout development progress.

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As HKU has been pioneering language teaching through technology, Dr. Ka-Yee Loh’s team from the Faculty of Education next introduced mLang, a mobile language app (IOS, Android) developed for non-native students to learn Chinese. Dr. Ki Wing Wah provided background to the app which revolves around DIY flashcard production by students. Ms. Florence Chu and Principal Tracy Cheung from HKMA Lee Kwok Po Secondary School (one of the partner schools) shared first-hand experiences and showcased videos demonstrating usage of mLang in class. Dr. Vincent Lau concluded with technology’s important role in mLang.

banner Ms. Florence Chu showcasing how mLang is applied in the classroom

Subsequent tours to the Centre for the Promotion of Language Learning, Digital Literacies Lab and TELI’s multimedia office enriched the visit, allowing delegates to learn more about the infrastructure supporting online learning in HKU.

banner A visit to the Centre for the Promotion of Language Learning, guided by Mr. Kevin Chan

banner Mr. Patrick Desloge guiding delegates through the Digital Literacies Lab inside the Chi Wah Learning Commons

banner TELI Multimedia team showcases TELI’s daily works

We look forward to future collaborations with Macao’s tertiary institutions. Contact us to learn more.

Implant Dentistry: The Massive Open Online Course! (MOOC)

Click here if you cannot access Youtube

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Implant Dentistry is one of the most dynamic and rapidly developing areas within oral health care. In spite of increasing popularity of implantology, it is a relatively new discipline within dental education and remains limited to post-graduate courses offered by dental schools in many parts of the world today.

With the vision to help dental practitioners gain clinical understanding of implantology and an opportunity to provide implant treatments to their patients, the Faculty of Dentistry of HKU (ranked No. 1 dental school in the World in 2016) developed this MOOC to provide a world-class quality, unbiased, evidence-based and clinically-oriented course in this discipline.

What are the contents covered in the course?
The MOOC includes 5 modules and runs over a period of 5 weeks. We will begin the journey of Implant Dentistry by exploring how discoveries in biology and technological developments lead to the current practice of dental implants. Then, we will examine clinical cases, diagnose our patients’ needs and expectations and learn the principles of treatment planning. We will learn step-by-step surgical procedures for placing implants and various restorative techniques, directed by current evidence and best practices. Finally, we will investigate major threats and complications of implant procedures and ways to ensure successful treatments and long serving implants.

Registration

Listen to our students and find out how they like our course!

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The Logo
The Logo of Implant Dentistry MOOC features the joining of an implant screw and a scholar hat, signifying the importance of a good education in oral implantology. The four colours of the logo are based on the four colours of blue, green, gold and red of HKU’s coat of arm, following the university’s spirit to manifest virtue and to investigate things.

Sneak Previews

More sneak previews here.

Sneak Preview 1

How to become an Implant dentist

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Sneak Preview 2

Minimally Invasive Surgery

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Sneak Preview 3

Micro Surgery Instruments

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Sneak Preview 4

The 3 main pathways

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Sneak Preview 5

Suture Techniques

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Sneak Preview 6

Implant Supported Provisional Restorations

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More than Just YouTube Plus a Quiz: HKU03x Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought

We believe that online courses are more than just YouTube videos plus a quiz. In building courses online, we endeavour to create the most integrated and personal learning experience for our learners.

In this age of information explosion, with numerous education resources available already, why would somebody care to be involved in a MASSIVE open online course (MOOC) through participation in the discussion forum? Ms. Karen Carlson, an enthusiastic MOOCer and a star learner in the course HKU03x Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought, is kind enough to share with us her thoughts. To Karen, one of the best things about HKU03x is having an instructor who is “extraordinarily involved” in the course from the start. Discussion with the teaching assistant, Catherine, also prompts her to think further and ask questions on issues such as whether it is possible to have a morality that is not imposed from the outside.

The course instructor Professor Hansen’s ownership, together with the active involvement of teaching assistants and fellow learners, are great motivations. Without instructor ownership, a course tends to turn into just “YouTube plus a quiz”, which is hardly a good class. “A class is far more of an overall experience where everything is integrated,” said Karen, and this is exactly what we believe.

While we are flattered to receive Karen’s positive comments, it is also our pleasure to meet and greet our MOOC learners. To us, producing a MOOC is not just about uploading videos and quizzes, but is also about connecting with learners from all around the world and building an online learning community. We don’t just teach. We care. Contact us if you have anything to share about your learning experience in HKU MOOCs.

Further reading
Take a look at Karen’s blog for her deep reflections on our course and other MOOCs.

A Head Start: Videos on Academic Honesty and CRE & BLT Module

The following news might be quite useful for our freshmen and graduating class.

TELI x The Libraries: A project on Information Literacy and Academic Honesty

As a university student, you might be turning in 20-30 pieces of academic writing in a year from short reports to term papers. That could be quite daunting, especially for freshmen. TELI has teamed up with The Libraries to bring our students some tips and resources on improving your writing on these aspects:

  • Avoiding plagiarism
  • Doing citations properly with time-saving tools
  • Checking for originality with Turnitin


Please visit the playlist here to find out more. Our librarians will also conduct several face-to-face sessions with students in selected Common Core courses to dig deeper on information literacy skills. Get ready with your questions, and let’s be stronger writers together!

Information Literacy

TELI x CEDARS: CRE & BLT online module
For those who are making plans for life after HKU, and have applied for the HKSAR Government Common Recruitment Examination and Basic Law Test in October, you may now join our online module developed in collaboration with CEDARS to get familiarized with the various types of tests. Overview of the test structure, useful tips on preparation and sample questions with adaptive hints are provided.

To register for this online module, please log onto:
https://learning.hku.hk/courses/course-v1:HKU+CRE001+2016/about

Good Luck!

September with Technology Vibe

We are welcoming our incoming class and returning students with technology vibe!

Artificial Intelligence as a Service: Free Text Analysis Tools

By courtesy of IBM, we are making available two simple tools for text analysis:

(1) Personality Insights, which uses linguistic analytics and personality theory to infer attributes from a person’s unstructured text; and
(2) Tone Analyzer, which uses cognitive linguistic analysis methods to measure the emotional tone in text.

They are ready for your use on our platform. Please sign in with your HKU Portal ID to gain access. For students, these tools might be helpful for refining write-ups such as term papers and job application letters. Teachers might want to think about how these tools could be incorporated in their courses. Feel free to make good use of them. In fact, over 200 have already signed up.

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Moodle looks So Different

moodle2 copyAesthetics is very much on our mind when we design online learning experience. That’s why our developers and designers have been working very hard with the E-learning Team of our Information Technology Services to make changes – big and small – to improve your Moodle experience.

A lot of you might have realized that our Moodle had a facelift – everything is (slightly) cleaner and clearer now, don’t you think? Some of our students noticed the change, and sent us comments and feedback – most of them are related to how much information should be shown on a single page, and how little tricks like sorting and searching might help them to locate a particular course. We really appreciate students’ input, and will continue to improve this learning management system.

Mentimeter – a web-based polling tool
It is one of our key missions is to introduce the latest technologies for effective learning and teaching.

In the previous academic year, we have been facilitating the use of an anonymous polling tool, Mentimeter, in some courses (sample cases are here). In view of the positive comments received, we will continue to provide support for free trials this year, as well as technical advice in case Departments/Faculties want to purchase their own licenses.

You may contact us through enquiry@teli.hku.hk for arrangement. Enjoy!

Keeping up with changing needs in e-portfolios (Part 2)

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Part 1

There are various types and models of e-portfolios accommodating to a range of subjects and purposes. For instance, Danielson & Abrutyn (1997) separates e-portfolios into working, display, assessment and class. Some can be for pure showcasing of works over a period of time, while others can be for graded assessment in a course. Thus, the focus of e-portfolios can be on assessment or the learning process and student development (Buyarski & Landis, 2014). Formative or summative means of assessment would both be feasible. As another example, Buzzetto-More (2009) focuses on information literacy as pedagogical outcome, and proposes an Information Literacy E-Portfolio Model (see Fig.1). It involves different practicing stages of students – from strategizing, acquiring, processing and evaluation, synthesis, meta-cognition and self-evaluation, articulation and presentation to response to feedback.

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Fig.1 Information Literacy E-Portfolio Model from Buzzetto-More, 2009

There is also a thread of research on incorporation of e-portfolios with other learning components (blended learning). For instance, Buyarski & Landis (2014, p.59) combines e-portfolios, first-year seminars and assessments together, which saw the intersection as a ‘maximiz[ing] efficacy of high-impact practices and assessment outcome.’ Luchoomun, McLukie & Van (2010) also explores collaborating Personal Development Plans (PDPs) with e-portfolio (blending with outcome based assessment). These e-portfolios can become a catalyst for ‘conversations among faculty and other stakeholders within departments…about common learning outcomes, coherence among courses and professional development (Chen & Penny Light, 2010, p.3).

Incorporating an e-portfolio in your course might sound overwhelming – that’s why we have set up a Community of Practice on E-portfolio to share experience and learn from each other. If you’d like to join us, please send us a message via enquiry@teli.hku.hk.

References

  • Buyarski, C & Landis, C. (2014). Using an ePortfolio to Assess the Outcomes of a First-Year Seminar: Student Narrative and Authentic Assessment. International Journal of ePortfolio, 4(1), 49-60.
  • Buzzetto-More, N. (2010) Assessing the Efficacy and Effectiveness of an E-Portfolio used for summative assessment. Interdisciplinary journal of e-learning and learning objects, volume 6, 61-85.
  • Chen, H. L., & Penny Light, T. (2010). Electronic portfolios and student success: Effectiveness, efficiency, and learning. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.
  • Danielson, C., & Abrutyn, L. (1997). An Introduction to Using Portfolios in the Classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
  • Luchoomun, D., McLuckie, J., & van, W. M. (January 01, 2010). Collaborative e-Learning: e-Portfolios for Assessment, Teaching and Learning. Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 8, 1, 21-30.

The Power of Games: Gamifying Cantonese Learning for Exchange Students

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Guest blogger series: Chaak Ming LAU
Mr. Chaak Ming Lau is a Part-time Lecturer at the School of Chinese, The University of Hong Kong. Lau specializes in computational linguistics and is the developer of the CantoSounds platform.

Gamification is a powerful tool to motivate students to learn. One recent successful example is the CantoSounds project 1 initiated by a team of Cantonese teachers from the School of Chinese. It is a versatile gamification platform for exchange students who often lament that Cantonese is a difficult language to learn. The CantoSounds team reached out a helping hand by providing self-learning online resources and gamifying the learning experience. The CantoSounds platform has been used in CHIN9511 Cantonese as a Foreign Language I and is now open for public access.

Creating a Versatile Gamification Platform for Self-learning

Canto1The CantoSounds platform now has over hundreds of videos and sound samples, as well as interactive learning materials, quizzes, and games, freely accessible online anytime. These materials are designed for self-practising pronunciation and romanisation outside class time, allowing teachers and students to focus on communicative language learning activities in class.

The system was rolled out in late January 2016. Through the system, students can watch videos demonstrating the explanatory of initials, finals and tones, click on images to listen to individual words, and do a simple quiz to test their understanding. All these actions give students game points. As they gain more points through progressive learning, they will be promoted to higher levels (from Newbie to Expert!). Learning is further gamified through providing different questions in every quiz quest, with instant feedback.

Creating an online gamification platform is not as difficult as one may think. The platform was built on WordPress with leveraging third-party plugins. For instance, CantoSounds used MyCred for the point system and WP-Pro Quiz for quizzes. A simple mini-game was embedded from the Quizlet flashcard platform. Less tech-savvy teachers can also update online content using WordPress’ ready-made editor backend.

Providing Extra Incentives via Gamifying the Learning Process

The team tested the platform with students in the course. In order to give extra incentives to students, 1% of the participation score of the course was allocated to the game platform. One mark will be assigned to students if they reach the highest rank (Expert, 1000 points) on the platform. Usually a mere 1% score cannot really motivate students, but the combination of course incentive plus gaming elements did a wonderful job in motivating students to hit the highest rank – Out of the 66 students who signed up, an amazing number of students (20) reached the Expert rank. This shows that students were attracted to use the system. With gamification, we can provide students with an engaging and “sticky” learning experience. This, we believe, is the power of gamification.

canto1a

Gamification is a powerful tool to reshape students’ learning experience and maximize learning outcome. It is not only useful in facilitating language teaching, but can also be used in other courses. If you are looking for ways to motivate students to learn, gamification may be one way to try out.

References

  • Barata, G., Gama, S., Jorge, J., & Gonçalves, D. (2013, October). Improving participation and learning with gamification. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on gameful design, research, and applications (pp. 10-17). ACM.
  • Conquering the 4Cs: Creating Engaging In-class Activities
    https://tl.hku.hk/2016/03/conquering-the-4cs-creating-engaging-in-class-activities/
  • DomíNguez, A., Saenz-De-Navarrete, J., De-Marcos, L., FernáNdez-Sanz, L., PagéS, C., & MartíNez-HerráIz, J. J. (2013). Gamifying learning experiences: Practical implications and outcomes. Computers & Education, 63, 380-392.
  • Kapp, K. M. (2012). The gamification of learning and instruction: game-based methods and strategies for training and education. John Wiley & Sons.
  • MOOC: Gamification https://www.coursera.org/learn/gamification
1 The CantoSounds project is funded by the HKU Teaching Development Grant.

Keeping up with changing needs in e-portfolios (Part 1)

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Universities have progressively turned to technology-enhanced strategies for teaching, learning and making learner-centred student assessment, inspiring life-long learning (Lopez-Fernandez & Rodriguez-Illera, 2009). E-portfolio supports this need, and has been used with different focuses for students, teachers and institutions in the education sector. Therefore, expectations for e-portfolios are constantly changing over the years.

A review of the literature shows that there are three primary functions of e-portfolios that support users’ affective and cognitive development – documentation (evidence and outcomes of learning), reflections on learning, and collaboration.

On documentation, personal, professional and intellectual development of students can be well recorded and supported in e-portfolios (Watson & Doolittle, 2011). The collection, organisation and analysis of various learning artefacts motivate students to process and make connections (Loreanzo & Ittelson, 2005a).

For reflections on learning, Lorenzo & Ittelson (2005a, 2005b) believe that e-portfolios encourage self-reflection and ‘involve exchange of ideas and feedback,’ enhancing information literacy. An in-depth learning involving ‘reflection, intrinsic motivation, story-telling, interconnections and real meaning making’ can be fostered, and students ‘learn by doing’ (Barrett, 2004; Cooper and Love, 2007, as cited in Buzzetto-More, 2010, p.66).

In relation to collaboration, Ahn (2004) views e-portfolio as an effective mechanism to encourage users to interact with peers, thus creating a good learning community. Students embrace learning from non-traditional activities (Wang, 2009, as cited in Buzzetto-More, 2010).

At HKU, how should we come up with solutions that are agile enough to meet these (still changing) needs? Please email us (enquiry@teli.hku.hk) with your ideas.


On July 23, TELI joined MBBS Year 5 students for an orientation to Medical Humanities. We’ve launched an e-portfolio system for their reflection writing exercise in the coming two years of clerkship.

References

  • Ahn, J. (2004). Electronic portfolios: Blending technology, accountability & assessment. T H E Journal. 31 (9).
  • Barrett, H. (2004). Electronic portfolios as digital stories of deep learning. Retrieved on 7/18/16 from: http://electronicportfolios.org/digistory/epstory.html
  • Buzzetto-More, N. (2010). Assessing the Efficacy and Effectiveness of an E-Portfolio used for summative assessment. Interdisciplinary journal of e-learning and learning objects, 6, 61-85.
  • Lopez-Fernandez, O., & Rodriguez-Illera, J. L. (January 01, 2009). Investigating university students’ adaptation to a digital learner course portfolio. Computers & Education, 52, 3, 608-616.
  • Lorenzo, G., & Ittelson, J. (2005a). An overview of e-portfolios. Educase Learning Initiative, 1-27.
  • Lorenzo, G., & Ittelson, J. (2005b). Demonstrating and assessing student learning with e-portfolios. Educause Learning Initiative Paper 3: 2005.
  • Watson, C. E., & Doolittle, P. E. (2011). ePortfolio pedagogy, technology, and scholarship: Now and in the future. Educational Technology, 51(5), 29-33.

Sneak Preview 5 – Vernacular Architecture of Asia: Tradition, Modernity & Cultural Sustainability

What does the future hold for vernacular architecture in Asia? In this concluding episode, we will try to look into this question and examine tradition, modernity, and cultural sustainability in the context of the Asian vernacular built environment. Register to take the course for free at http://tinyurl.com/architecturemooc and join learners from around the world on July 26, 2016. Find out more about it here!

Sneak Preview ( Week 5 )

Course Trailer

Assessing with ePortfolios

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As the curriculum broadened in scope and depth, more and more teachers are interested in developing meaningful and effective ways of documenting, monitoring and evaluating student achievements through ePortfolios. That’s why Professor Gavin Brown (Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland) and Dr. Tanja Sobko (Faculty of Science, HKU) received a full-house attendance at their seminar “Assessing with ePortfolios” on July 8, 2016.

Gavin

Professor Brown introduced ePortfolio as a ‘systematic, purposeful and chronological collection of student work’ which empowers students to continuously learn through critical thinking and reflection. There are several aspects to facilitate the use of ePortfolios.

  • First, students need to understand the importance of reflection and self-monitored learning. A timely and continuous progress is the key – work must start early for students to curate and build the ePortfolio. Willingness to reveal different stages of work justifies improvements and connections to learning outcomes.
  • Second, for teachers, having a well-designed rubric and cross-references will lead to good assessment. Alternatively, an ePortfolio can be developed as a non-assessed dialogue with students – but some incentives or motivation will be necessary.
  • Third, be flexible about the platform for ePortfolio. Professor Brown believes that current market options have similar technology. It is not necessary to be too restrictive.

ePortfolio

An example in HKU

In the second part of the seminar, Dr. Sobko shared her ePortfolio experience in a BSc Exercise and Health course with 30 students. She aimed to promote eHealth Literacy 1 via the combined use of wearable device ‘Mi band’ and ePortfolio. Students wore the tracker device to record their daily activity levels (e.g., walking distance, hours of deep sleep) electronically, and wrote regular reflections during the process.

ePortfolio

It was found that students became more aware of their personal health, and incorporated more scientific references in their reflection writing as the weeks passed. Key words to describe content quality of ePortfolio evolved from ‘interesting’, ‘personal’ at the beginning to ‘reflective’, ‘evidence-based’, ‘organized’ at the end of the course.

Dr. Sobko particularly saw the added value of the data collected in helping to ‘track, support and explore development of new literacies in eHealth literacy.’

TELI is now working closely with teachers on a few pilot projects to understand the features that they’d like to see in ePortfolios. If you’d like to collaborate, please get in touch via enquiry@teli.hku.hk.

Download the presentations here:
Prof Brown’s presentation
Dr. Sobko’s presentation

Summary of workshop details here.

1 The ability to seek, find and understand health information from e-sources, and apply that knowledge to solve personal health problems.