Message from Professor George Tham, Associate Vice-President (Teaching & Learning)
Dear Colleagues,
You are cordially invited to participate in an online e-Learning questionnaire conducted at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). The aim of the survey is to collect data about teachers’ perceptions of their experience on the use of all types of technologies to enhance teaching and learning in conjunction with face-to-face learning in the University. We invite all teachers to participate in this survey. A separate survey investigating students’ perceptions of their e-Learning experience is being administered concurrently. Your feedback will help us to provide a better physical and virtual learning environment.
The questionnaire should take about 5 minutes to complete. Your answers will remain anonymous and your survey responses will be kept strictly confidential.
To participate in the online survey, please visit:
If you have any questions or queries about this survey please contact Dr Maggie Zhao of the Institutional Survey Team at myzhao@hku.hk.
Best regards,
Professor George Tham
Associate Vice-President (Teaching & Learning)
Professor, Department of Civil Engineering
Associate Dean (Quality Assurance), Faculty of Engineering
The University of Hong Kong
Organized by Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL)
Speaker: Mr Darren Harbutt (Instructional Designer, CETL, HKU) Date: 21st October, 2014 (Tuesday) Time: 12:45pm – 2:00pm [Sandwiches will be served with coffee and tea.]
Venue: Room 321, Run Run Shaw Building
Abstract:
Research has shown that giving feedback is one of the keys to improving student performance, particularly in relation to formative assessment. While handwritten feedback and face-to-face consultations continue to serve us well in this regard, e-learning tools can also play an important role. One such tool is GradeMark, which enables online grading and a variety of forms of feedback, and now comes together with the familiar anti-plagiarism service Turnitin. GradeMark opens up further rich possibilities and can prove a useful addition to teachers’ feedback repertoire.
This seminar will first look at the basics of GradeMark, including hands-on time to explore the tool. Then it will consider examples of how GradeMark can be used for a variety of teaching and learning feedback scenarios: for essays, for presentations, for submissions in non-traditional formats such as images and slides, and finally for marking and giving feedback away from a computer via the Turnitin iPad app. As part of the seminar is hands-on, it would be useful if you could bring along a laptop and/or an iPad.
About the Speaker:
Darren Harbutt has over twenty years’ teaching experience which he finds invaluable in his role as an Instructional Designer in the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit, located in CETL. In his work in education, learning and teaching are always at the forefront, supported by appropriate technology and based on sound pedagogical principles.
For information on registration, please contact:
Ms Ivy Lai , CETL
Phone: 3917 8996; Email: laichun2@hku.hk.
Message from Centre for Information Technology in Education within the Faculty of Education
CITE Seminar Series 2014/2015
CITE Seminar – Flourishing in the Educational Technology Spotlight
Date: 10 October 2014 (Friday) Time: 12:00 pm – 1:20 pm Venue: Room 101, 1/F., Runme Shaw Building, The University of Hong Kong Speaker: Sangil Yoon (Sang), Stanford Graduate School of Business Chair: Dr. Samuel K. W. Chu, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, HKU
About the Seminar
In recent years, Silicon Valley has been electrified with educational technology innovation and unprecedented financial investment. Four Stanford professors experimented with MOOCs and soon realized the potential to disrupt higher education. These professors either left their tenured positions or took leave of absences to lead new startups (i.e., Udacity, NovoEd, Coursera). Many universities took notice and are placing educational technology in the spotlight as a strategic initiative.
In this seminar, Sangil Yoon (Sang), who leads the Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Academic Technology Services (ATS) group, will discuss how the role and expectations of educational technology professionals has evolved in recent years. Several case studies that cover a broad spectrum of ATS initiatives (i.e., flipped classes, MOOCs, certificates) will highlight how educational technology teams can adapt to the rapidly changing education landscape. The seminar will conclude with a facilitated discussion on the disruption of higher education by technology. What will disruption look like? Will it happen from within or outside? What are the biggest challenges we face? What will your role be?
About the Speaker
Sangil Yoon (Sang) is the Director of the Academic Technology Services group at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), where he is responsible for leading educational technology initiatives at the GSB.
Sang has extensive experience with educational technology from product design to program and systems management. He holds three degrees from Indiana University – Bloomington: a B.S. in Business Operations, Management and International Business, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Instructional Systems Technology. Sang’s research and recent teaching centers on emerging e-learning delivery models, including MOOCs, blended courses, and distance education via synchronous technologies.
EPSU hosted a seminar to update the HKU community on progress with the development of the University’s four Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Over 70 colleagues from the various Schools, Departments, and University Offices attended the session.
An article on HKUx01 Epidemics was posted on HealthMap’s Disease Daily today. Please check it out.
Extract
… In the HKUx “Epidemics” MOOC, Peiris is part of an inter-disciplinary team of eleven experts. He reveals, “Our experiences of fighting previous epidemics such as the 2003 SARS outbreak in Hong Kong showed that we needed a comprehensive skillset to tackle the outbreak. That’s why we’re bringing together laboratory microbiologists, infectious disease epidemiologists, public health physicians and media journalists, both locally and internationally, to collaborate in this course.” …
The HKUx 01 Epidemics MOOC started on September 23. Join thousands of learners from around the world to explore the origin, spread, control and communication of infectious diseases.
At this time, The University of Hong Kong course HKU01x, Epidemics is available from your edX Dashboard, and the staff would like to officially welcome you!
You’ll find materials for the first week on the Courseware page, including both video lectures and quizzes.
Please take some time to go to the Course Details page to view the course’s learning outcomes, syllabus, assessment and grading criteria, and become familiar with course policies.
I will be your course lead and I hope you will all have a great time learning about epidemics!
On behalf of the staff, welcome, good luck, and have fun!
EPSU hosted a seminar to update the HKU community on progress with the development of the University’s four Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Over 70 colleagues from the various Schools, Departments, and University Offices attended the session.
Message from Centre for Information Technology in Education within the Faculty of Education
CITE Seminar Series 2014/2015
CITE Seminar – Teaching in the Virtual Environment at HKU
Date: 19 September 2014, Friday
Time: 12:45 pm – 2:00 pm
Venue: Room 104, 1/F., Runme Shaw Building, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Brant Knutzen, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong
About the Seminar
Are you ready to teach in the virtual world? This seminar will introduce the use of the Second Life virtual environment for teaching at HKU. Current projects will be reviewed and demonstrated, including training for medical students on HKU Medicine Island and a range of teaching environments constructed on HKU Education Island, such as a 1-1 laptop virtual classroom, an art deco bar / restaurant, a small theatre, and two designed to train psychomotor skills in the virtual world: arachnophobia, and a tesseract.
The Fire Safety scenario constructed for the Pathology dept at HKU is designed to be experiential learning for Histopathology lab students, to supplement their normal PPT safety briefing. Students use a Head-Up-Display (HUD) to receive instructions, and make choices. After going through the scenario the individual participants will join small-group online discussions using Participation Forums on Moodle to talk about what went wrong, and why. Video demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6yXVR96sYc
Later we plan to develop Chemical Safety, and Biological Safety scenarios.
The Biochemistry scenario is designed to supplement face-to-face laboratory training for medical students, make it more interesting and engaging, and provide a patient background to the analysis of a bio-sample. Students will participate in teams, and each team will be assigned one of five virtual patients, each unique case history with disease symptoms and bio-sample for analysis. Teams will present their diagnoses to the class.
In part 1 the student doctors meet the patient, reviews her medical history, and views a recorded telemedicine interview based on chatbot technology. Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoM1X2dG9xw
In part 2 the students takes the patient bio-sample from the hospital to the laboratory for lipoprotein separation analysis. Students use a Head-Up-Display (HUD) to receive instructions, and make choices regarding common problems setting up the gel tank electrophoresis equipment, and the basics of analyzing the results.
Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z0IrDeOAmY
Teaching in the virtual world is ideal for blended and distance education, and implementing a “Global Classroom”.
After the demonstration, an open discussion will follow about resources available, ways to integrate the use of the virtual environment into teaching, and a Virtual Environment Study Group for interested people to join.
About the Speaker Brant Knutzen has been developing innovative educational resources using technology since 1985, when he set up a BBS to coordinate and train PC support technicians for Hughes Aircraft company in Los Angeles. More recently, he built his first virtual world in Second Life for an international school in 2008, to support a Design course. Since 2009 he has been teaching for HKU on the MSc IT in Education programme as a lecturer.
Now in 2014, he has created scenario-based experiential learning on HKU Medicine Island to support TDG studies for Biochemistry and Pathology students. These engaging scenarios are integrated with Moodle learning activities to support formative assessment, including customized discussion forums for small-group social construction of knowledge (see ParticipationForum.org for more info). Another tool he has created to quantify group participation and display qualitative patterns of interaction is the Participation Map, a learning analytic Moodle plugin (see ParticipationMap.org for more info).
Both of these customized Moodle tools were tested in pilot programs at HKU in 2012, and installed on the central HKU Moodle server in 2013 to support online discussions and social constructivism pedagogy. A new addition to the Participation suite of tools is the Participation Glossary, which automatically awards a point whenever a student contributes a new term definition.
For more information, see blog at Brant.Knutzen.se
An article on HKUx01 Epidemics was posted on HealthMap’s Disease Daily today. 
