We are excited to share some highlights of Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative’s (TELI) involvement in HKU The Review 2017!
#Innovative #Testing New Waters
TELI Vision
Online content and new technology are becoming ever more prominent in university education, creating alternatives to standard lectures such as flipped classrooms. TELI strives to help teachers explore new ways to teach. We support and promote e-learning across HKU, for example by developing games and apps with teachers and producing online learning materials. We also:
Produce courses
Eight Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) through the edX and Coursera platforms in 2016-17
Six on-campus Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs) that blend MOOC-style online learning with on-campus classes
Collaborate
A University Grants Council (UGC) funded project to produce 10 SPOCs with three local universities, namely the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The content (general education or common core-type course) will be shared among the four universities.
A new mode of collaboration: a commission from Mass Transit Railway Corporation to produce videos about its operations for public consumption.
Encourage innovative teaching
Professor Ricky Kwok (who oversees TELI) launched a summer edition of his Common Core course, Everyday Computing and the Internet, creating an opportunity for students to experience flipped classroom in Peking University. It was a brand new experience for our students. It included three weeks online learning and two intensive weeks at Peking University with Mainland students.
“To provide a more effective learning experience, you have to adapt course material for a new generation. They are learning in a different way than we did in the past,” said Mr. Chia-Wei Wu, Director of Learning Sciences and Technologies of School of Dental Medicine, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), in the seminar “Penn Dental Medicine Academic Initiative and the Influence of Technology Development in Medical Science” on November 7, 2017. In this seminar, Mr. Wu shared his successful experience in changing the teaching and learning environment at UPenn DMD programme, through introducing iPedagogy and incorporating the latest technological approaches.
Mr. Wu introducing iPedagogy to HKU students and staff
iPedagogy at UPenn DMD
Four technology-empowered initiatives have been introduced to improve student engagement and facilitate teachers in monitoring students’ performance:
The iPad initiative
Starting from 2014, every newly admitted DMD student from School of Dental Medicine is given an iPad and they are required to bring the iPad to school on a daily basis for learning. Several apps essential for learning have been remotely installed for easy access to course information and materials. Students can keep the iPads even after graduation.
iBooks
An e-book app, iBooks, was introduced as an teaching and learning platform in the DMD programme. It allows teachers to conveniently import teaching materials. Traditional textbooks used in the programme have been converted to an electronic format with better visuals. iBooks also enables students and teachers to access content of different media types at the same time, such as instructional videos, course schedules and published journal articles. Interactive online worksheets and quizzes are also included in the app. Furthermore, students can download the most up-to-date version of course books through iBooks anytime anywhere. What is more, email notifications are automatically disseminated to students regarding course content updates. As of this year, 24 electronic textbooks are now available on iBooks and most of them are clinical manuals and course documents for the 4-year study programme.
The visual and graphic presentations of iBooks of DMD programme
Online lectures
Tailor-made online lecture videos have been designed to cover various topics in one learning module, which concentrates the course, making its content more concise and efficient in content delivery. While using the iBooks app to watch lecture videos, simultaneous note-taking is also supported, hence students do not have to keep jumping from one app to another to jot notes. According to the feedback of course teachers and students, online lectures enabled them to have much more time to engage in in-class discussions*, as students are required to familiarize themselves with the course content by watching lecture videos before coming to class for in-class activities.
Gamification
Merging game and studies – Various interactive platforms, such as Poll Everywhere and PaGamo, are used to engage students in classroom activities. Students’ feedback showed that they were very content with the use of games to learn as well as study for tests.
Success of iPedagogy
iPedagogy in UPenn received wide acclaim from students and academic staff. Students found that learning with iPads greatly enhanced their lab experience and practice, since they could easily refer back to demonstration videos and chapter content during laboratory experiments. They found carrying their iPads rather than heavy textbooks to class much more convenient. Teachers also noted that technology stimulated students’ in-class engagement – students were more likely to participate in anonymous polling and other interactive online activities in lectures. In addition, it was easier for teachers to closely monitor students’ performance and their learning progress with a centralized learning platform, so they could adjust their teaching plans and improve the syllabus conveniently.
On top of pursuing academic achievement in university, proficiency in technology literacy is an important skillset that students should acquire in university education nowadays. You and your department can take an initiative to make a change in your school! Contact us if you have an idea in mind.
support in using e-learning technologies in teaching, such as mobile applications, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), Moodle, e-portfolio, etc;
professional development training for teachers;
data analysis for teaching and learning.
You may also reach out to:
CETL for face-to-face professional development training;
How do you measure success? Many researchers, when evaluating Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), tend to measure the success of a course with a single metric, i.e. the completion rate. However, MOOCs generally have a large audience, and given the diverse background of MOOC learners, every learner differs in goals and level of engagement with the course materials. It may not be comprehensive enough to evaluate learner success by simple looking at whether he/she has finished the course; and the overall course completion rate alone may not suffice in evaluating the success of a MOOC.
This is what we learnt from a seminar entitled “Demystifying Learner Success: Before, During, and After a Massive Open Online Course”, delivered by Dr Elle Yuan Wang, a Research Scientist at EdPlus Action Lab, Arizona State University on August 1, 2017. Organized by the Faculty of Education, this seminar offered us a different perspective on how to measure success of a MOOC, an ongoing debate among researchers.
Learner Success in terms of Post-Course Career Development
Dr Wang believes that learner success can take many different forms – traditional assessment scores, or in other forms of post-course development, such as career development. In her 2014 study, she measured the post-course development of a group of MOOC learners two years after the end of the course using two metrics: whether learners (i) joined a relevant professional society; and/or (ii) submitted a paper in a relevant conference. By comparing learners’ post-course career development and in-course performance, she set out to investigate the relation between the two. The ultimate goal is to find out how career advancers differ from other learners in terms of their in-course performance.
The research targeted learners of the first iteration of The Big Data in Education MOOC, a postgraduate-level 8-week course offered on Coursera in 2013. Dr Wang was one of the teaching assistants of the course. (The subsequent iterations of the course have been offered on edX.)
The study revealed that:
Career advancers who joined a professional society or submitted a paper earned better scores and were more likely to complete the course than non-advancers.
Career advancers also demonstrated more frequent engagement with course components including course pages, lecture videos, assignment submissions, and discussion forums. For example, the page viewing activities of people who joined a professional society were much higher than non-members.
However, even though career advancers tended to have more post-reading actions, they were not significantly more likely to post, comment, or vote than their peers.
Significance of the Research
This study enriched our understanding of how MOOCs potentially impact learners’ career development and the possible association between student behaviors and positive developments. All these findings are crucial for educators in developing and improving their MOOCs in the future.
A Special Note of Thanks
Hereby we would like to thank Dr Wang for not only sharing with us her research endeavours and findings, but also inspiring our work in learning analytics in HKU. Our colleague, Dr Leon Lei, completed The Big Data in Education MOOC on Coursera in 2013 and is now applying principles learnt from the course in developing our own MOOCs in HKU. Thank you, Dr Wang, for inspiring us. We look forward to more opportunities to further explore learning analytics and educational data mining with fellow researchers in the future.
*Note: Dr Wang’s research was conducted in collaboration with Ryan Baker, University Pennsylvania, and Luc Paquette, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For further details, please refer to the original research paper: Wang, Y., Paquette, L., Baker, R. (2014). A longitudinal study on learner career advancement in MOOCs. Journal of Learning Analytics, 1(3), 203-206. [PDF]
We are happy to share our recent projects in the latest issue of the Convocation Newsletter! Our work would not have been possible without the support of the university, our colleagues and students. Thank you for your support all along!
the app Armillary Sphere, for the Common Core course Our Place in the Universe. It combines ancient intelligence with modern technology, and allows learners to gain “hands-on” experience in operating a venerable astronomical instrument virtually. The app is available on both Apple Store and Google Play Store.
Two Years in a Row
We also made an appearance in the Convocation Newsletter Summer 2016. For the second year in a row, we proudly present the results of our endeavours in e-learning in this publication. We explored the incorporation of pioneering learning strategies, such as blended learning, flipped classrooms and gamification, as well as the positive impacts they bring to the classroom.
We experiment, innovate and inspire. We aspire to continue our catalytic role in enhancing the quality of learning and making teaching at HKU more potent.
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