In the Making: Introduction to Dinosaur Ecosystems

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a popular theme for Hollywood movies and museum exhibitions, but how do we extend that facsination when it becomes a topic to teach? Our new MOOC Introduction to Dinosaur Ecosystems has taken on this challenge to bring you right to a place where dinosaurs once roamed.

Course Instructor Dr. Michael Pittman and Professor Xu Xing of the Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology completed an expedition to the Chinese Gobi desert this summer to collect new fossils and rock samples from the Upper Cretaceous dinosaur-dominated ecosystem of Erlian, Inner Mongolia. Against this backdrop Dr. Pittman, Prof. Xu and several guest experts recorded many of the MOOC’s lectures giving viewers a glimpse into what expeditions are like and what palaeontologists see in the burning desert landscape.

meetingOn 13 August, Dr. Pittman and videographer Cameron Dueck (first and second from the right) had a meeting with the Technology-Enriched Learning Initative (TELI) team to review the footage taken in the Gobi.

Here are some still shots for your previewing:

DinosaurDr. Pittman talking to the local wildlife

DinosaurProf Xu Xing excavating a dinosaur fossil (Dr. Pei Rui [HKU] in the distance)

DinosaurDinosaur bones on the desert floor!

DinosaurDr. Pittman sorting through previous Erlian dinosaur finds with Drs. Corwin Sullivan (IVPP) and Pei Rui

DinosaurHKU undergraduate Fion Ma helping Dr. Pittman sort through past Erlian fossil finds.

DinosaurA mounted skeleton of a therizinosauroid theropod. Theropod dinosaurs like T. rex are known for their carnivory, but this animal was a herbivore!

googlemapClick to see the interactive map
Dr. Pittman, Prof. Xu and their colleagues investigated Upper Cretaceous rocks in the desert northeast of Erlian (Erenhot), Inner Mongolia.

Want to join us on an adventurous ride back to the dinosaur-era? Stay tuned.

E-learning Strategy 2015 endorsed by Senate

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A renewed E-learning Strategy is now available to guide Faculties and Departments in judiciously setting priorities, experimenting with ideas, and formulating action plans for e-learning.

In response to the 2011 Senate recommendation that an institutional review be conducted on our E-learning Strategy at a three-yearly interval, as well as to acknowledge the rapid changes in the landscape of higher education within and beyond the University, an E-learning Review Group was constituted in January 2015 to put forward an enhanced strategy with the input from Faculties, The Hong Kong University Students’ Union and the Postgraduate Student Association. The Senate endorsed the Review Group’s submission in July.

With the support from Senate, we are now ready to go ahead with the implementation. Please check back this blog often to learn more about projects that we are doing, as well as the types of support that are made available to you.

Grand Finale of Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought

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As HKU03x Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought is drawing to a close, we are going to round up the journey with an exciting online debate! You can join us in the audience simply by clicking on YouTube.

As remarked by course instructor Professor Chad Hansen, ‘For a teacher, it is a big change getting to know most of you by “handles” on your posts and [be] awed by the global reach and diversity of our online community.’ This debate goes in line with our dedication to achieving extensive global reach, while keeping the high-touch personalized interaction that you would expect in traditional classroom teaching.

Debaters from around the world will present their arguments on the topic
“We should follow the social conventions of our society”, followed by comments and summary by Professor Chad Hansen.

Date: August 15, 2015 (Saturday)
Time: 22:00 HKT / 14:00 UTC
Language: English

Live recording

Instructions:

  1. Click the above link and then choose the YouTube live stream: HKU03x Online Debate: We should follow the social conventions of our society.
  2. Depending on your YouTube time zone setting, you will see “Watch the live stream!” and the time of the event, with the number of hours left to the debate underneath.
  3. Contribute to the live chat on your right and share with us your thoughts during the debate!
  4. Let the countdown begin and we are looking forward to meeting you online.

Don’t miss out on the grand finale of our first MOOC in Philosophy!

News coverage on HKU’s effort in e-learning

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South China Morning Post recently interviewed our teachers on how e-learning has taken off at HKU and will bring unprecedented learning experience to learners both on and off campus. The first MOOC, an introductory public health course entitled Epidemics, showcased the University’s strength in the global context, and was “hugely successful”.

The initiative turned out to be headlights into how online learning can be widely and effectively incorporated into on-campus education. The article highlighted the valuable statistics collected from MOOCs. Leveraging a treasure of both quantitative and qualitative data collected from an impressive number of MOOC learners, teachers were able to evaluate and refine course materials and assessments, which can then be repurposed for their on-campus counterparts, laying the groundwork for “flipped classroom” teaching.

The data also provided insights into how some e-learning tools for on-campus students can be improved. For example, compared to the underused Moodle online forum, the MOOC discussion forums encouraged students to ask questions in a comfortable way since they allowed a certain level of anonymity.

New and exciting online courses are on the way to provide e-learners an ever better expereience. Read the article to find out more.

Debate At A Click: Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought

HKU03x Debate At A Click

Here’s your chance to question and get challenged by ideas and beliefs of your fellow learners!

HKU03x Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought is holding an online debate activity to be broadcast live on YouTube. You can join in the audience anywhere at a click.

Drawing on the Chinese philosophical concepts developed in the course, six debaters coming from around the world will discuss the topic “We should follow the social conventions of our society” from the affirmative and negative perspectives. Course instructor Professor Chad Hansen will adjudicate the debate and summarize the ideas presented.

Details of the debate:

Date: August 15, 2015 (Saturday)
Time: 22:00 HKT / 14:00 UTC
Language: English

It is a valuable opportunity for you to learn “face-to-face” with Professor Hansen and fellow MOOC takers. Join us!

Motivations for experts’ knowledge sharing in online communities: What can we learn from Google and Symantec

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Organized by e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit, CETL

Speaker: Dr. Jingli Cheng, e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit
Date : 13 August, 2015 (Thursday)
Time : 12:45pm – 2:00pm
Venue : Room 321, Run Run Shaw Building

Abstract:

Communities of practice as an approach to informal learning has received attention from various types of organizations, including higher education institutions. A fundamental process underlying successful communities of practice is knowledge sharing. Yet, empirical understanding of motivations for knowledge sharing is lacking, especially with regard to an important subset of participants in these communities, the experts. Based on a research study that the speaker conducted with Google and Symantec, this presentation will highlight the key factors that motivated expert participants’ knowledge sharing behaviors in the two companies’ online user communities.

Colleagues who are considering implementing communities of practice or knowledge sharing initiatives in and beyond their organizations may get useful insights from this presentation. Teachers who are thinking about motivating student participation in online communities may also find this workshop beneficial. All are welcome.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Jingli Cheng has extensive experience applying instructional design theories and best practices in various organizational settings to help learners improve their knowledge and skills. Before joining HKU’s e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit, he worked as Instructional Designer at Stanford University, the Hewlett Packard company and several other organizations in the United States. His research interests include motivation for knowledge sharing in online communities and informal learning in organizational settings.

Please send enquiries to Miss Cherry Lai
Email: cherry.lai@hku.hk.

CITE Seminar by Dr. Bei Yu & Dr. Jun Wang, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, USA

Message from Centre for Information Technology in Education within the Faculty of Education

CITE Seminar Series 2015/2016

Seminar 1
Title: Automated Citation Opinion Analysis for Scientific Writing

Date: 17 July 2015 (Friday)
Time: 12:45 pm – 2:00 pm
Venue: Room 101, 1/F., Runme Shaw Building, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Dr. Bei Yu, Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, USA
Chair: Dr. Xiao Hu, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, HKU

About the Seminar
With the fast growth of academic publications, researchers face the increasingly difficult task of comprehensive literature review. Current bibliographic databases provide citation linkages but no further citation context analysis to help researchers find the most relevant citations and organize different kinds of academic opinions expressed in citation context. The Citation Opinion Retrieval and Analysis (CORA) project aims for building an automated tool that can extract the citation statements, separate substantial citations from perfunctory ones, and categorize substantial citation opinions by their purposes, topic aspects, polarities, and the opinion holders and targets. CORA is expected to save researchers a significant amount of time to find the most useful comments from a large number of citations. CORA will also provide a new, qualitative approach for assessing research impact and tracking problematic phenomena such as citation bias.

For more details about the Speaker & registration, please visit
http://www.cite.hku.hk/news.php?id=543&category=seminar

Seminar 2
Title: DoodleBook: A New Tool for Science Education

Date: 17 July 2015 (Friday)
Time: 2:00 pm – 3:15 pm
Venue: Room 101, 1/F., Runme Shaw Building, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Dr. Jun Wang, Research Scientist, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, USA
Chair: Dr. Xiao Hu, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, HKU

About the Seminar
There is growing evidence to show that drawing to learn, a visual and constructive learning strategy, is both engaging and effective. Emerging research is now suggesting that drawing should be recognized alongside writing, reading, and speaking as a key element in science education. This talk will present our recent work on drawing to learn in science (www.doodlebook.org). Developed with funding from the National Academies, DoodleBook serves two goals: (1) to make science more accessible and engaging through art; (2) to provide science students and educators, from kindergarten to college, with a free online space to create, collaborate, and share their own digital drawings. We will present our findings on how art students create drawings for scientific concepts, and how science teachers and students use the web tool in their classes.

For more details about the Speaker & registration, please visit
http://www.cite.hku.hk/news.php?id=544&category=seminar

Archiving 2013/14 Moodle courses – remove any copyrighted materials by July 15, 2015

Dear Moodle Course Teachers,

To enhance performance of our learning management system, old Moodle courses will have to be offloaded to the Archive System. On July 15, 2015, all Moodle courses from the academic year 2013/14 (i.e., course code ended with “_2013”) will be frozen to initiate this moving process.

There are two pertinent issues that I would like to draw your attention to:

(1) To comply with section 41A(5) of the Copyright Ordinance, teachers should remove all copyrighted materials on their Moodle courses after 12 months of their uploading.
(2) Teachers will have “read-only” access to their respective archived courses for education purposes (e.g., to prepare for the next offering). They will not be able to make any changes to the content of the archived courses. Besides, students will have “read-only” access to the archived courses.
More details about the Archive System are shown in the FAQ section of the Moodle Resources Website http://moodle-support.hku.hk (click here to visit the FAQ).

If you would like to opt out of the archiving arrangement with good reasons, please send an email with detailed information about your course to eLearningTeam@hku.hk on or before July 15, 2015. Thank you.

Best Regards,
CP Lau
eLearning Team
Information Technology Services

e-learning News from EPSU – June 2015

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Recent MOOC Developments at HKU

The HKU Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) initiative continues its momentum. In addition to the successful conclusion of HKU02.1x: The Search for Vernacular Architecture of Asia, the E-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU) is working with the course teams on designing and running a few other MOOCs:

You can register for these HKU MOOCs at edx.org.

Recording available: Knowledge Gained from the First HKU MOOC

From September to December 2014, HKU’s first MOOC, HKU01x Epidemics, ran on the edX platform. Over 10,000 learners enrolled in the course. HKU01x course teachers and EPSU conducted a seminar titled Broadening Horizons: Knowledge gained, experiences shared and lessons learned from HKU’s first MOOC HKU01x Epidemics, in which the speakers explored various viewpoints arising from the course. The recorded seminar can be viewed here.

Selected Video Resources for E-learning

Hands-On Workshops on Moodle and Panopto Unison

A new function, Panopto Unison, is now available. Panopto Unison module allows teachers to upload their existing video files in other formats to the Panopto system and share the uploaded video with the students in a Moodle course.

A new hands-on workshop PAN-004 “Share existing video to a Moodle course using Panopto Unison” is scheduled among other workshops on Learning Management System (LMS) – Moodle and Lecture Capture Service (LCS) – Panopto. Details of workshops can be found in the online training schedule.

E-learning Consultancy

EPSU works closely with Faculties, Departments, programme teams and teachers on various e-learning initiatives, including flipped classroom, online learning modules and technology-enhanced assessment as well as analytics-informed course planning. For more information, please contact Ms Trudi Chan (Phone: 2241 5282; Email: trudi@hku.hk.)

EPSU Seminar – How to design, produce, and run a MOOC with confidence

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Organized by e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit, CETL

Speaker: Dr. Jingli Cheng, e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit
Date : 9 July, 2015 (Thursday)
Time : 12:45pm – 2:00pm
Venue : Room 321, Run Run Shaw Building

Abstract:

How Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are changing the higher education landscape is much talked about in academic and popular writings, yet for professors, designers and support staff of MOOCs, very little exists that serves as practical guidance for design, production and implementation of MOOCs.

In May 2015, the University of Hong Kong successfully concluded a Massive Open Online Course on the topic of vernacular architecture. A rigorous design, production and implementation process was key to the success of this course. In this presentation, Dr. Jingli Cheng, lead instructional designer and project manager of the MOOC, will share experience, best practice, and lessons learned through the project.

Go behind the scene and learn about the essential elements that led to a successful MOOC!

About the Speaker:

Dr. Jingli Cheng has extensive experience applying instructional design theories and best practices in various organizational settings to help learners improve their knowledge and skills. Before joining the HKU’s e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit, he worked as Instructional Designer at Stanford University, the Hewlett Packard company and several other organizations in the United States. His research interests include motivation for knowledge sharing in online communities and informal learning in organizational settings.

Please send enquiries to Miss Carmen Cheung
Email: carmen.cheung@hku.hk.